Public-Private Relations in Totalitarian States 2011017763, 9781412842600

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Part I: Contemporary Cultures
1 Popular Culture: A Conception of a Vulnerable Social Order
2 Global Culture: The Quest for World Self-Emancipation Prospects and Difficulties
3 Media Charisma and Global Culture: The Experience of East-Central Europe
Part II: The Crises of Rituals and Rituals in Times of Crises
4 Anomie and the Crisis of the Ritual: The Riseof Network Culture
5 Rituals of Political Purification in East-Central Europe after the Fall of Communism
Part III: The Empowered Public Sphere
6 The Exposure of Private Sphere to Public Moralities and the Conditions Favoring Conformism
7 The Public Sphere as a Metanetwork Space
8 The Imbalance in Public/Private Relations in Totalitarian States and the Ensuing Cultural Resistance
Index

Citation preview

Public-Private Relations in

TOTALITARIAN STATES

Public-Private Relations in

TOTALITARIAN STATES Gabriel A. Barhaim

First published 2012 by Transaction Publishers Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2012 by Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2011017763 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Barhaim, Gabriel A. Public-private relations in totalitarian states / Gabriel A. Barhaim. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-1-4128-4260-0 1. Totalitarianism. 2. Social Order. 3. Politics and culture. I. Title. JC480.B36123 2011 320.53—dc23 2011017763 ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-4260-0 (hbk)

For Itamar and Yael

Contents Preface and Acknowledgments

ix

Part I: Contemporary Cultures

1

1 2 3

Popular Culture: A Conception of a Vulnerable Social Order Global Culture: The Quest for World Self-Emancipation Prospects and Difficulties

31

Media Charisma and Global Culture: The Experience of East-Central Europe

47

Part II: The Crises of Rituals and Rituals in Times of Crises 4 5

67

Anomie and the Crisis of the Ritual: The Rise of Network Culture

69

Rituals of Political Purification in East-Central Europe after the Fall of Communism

81

Part III: The Empowered Public Sphere 6

3

119

The Exposure of Private Sphere to Public Moralities and the Conditions Favoring Conformism

121

7

The Public Sphere as a Metanetwork Space

139

8

The Imbalance in Public/Private Relations in Totalitarian States and the Ensuing Cultural Resistance

155

Index

171

Preface and Acknowledgments Culture, I argue, comments, guides and reflects the ever-changing social. It is its work of meanings behind the unfolding social drama that resonates in the fate of an individual’s life. Culture is like an indispensable mobile reflector that without its projected light, the social would not make sense. In its rotations it enlightens the quasi-chaotic social kaleidoscope into endless commentaries. A cultural analysis as I have applied it in this book, should explore both the mode of intertwinement between social and culture as well as the emerging value orientations. It examines both the dialectics between the two domains as well as the emanating context of ideas that is produced. The analysis weighs both the interplay between the two fields as well as the derivative knowledge constitution. For example, it attempts to both understand the interaction between the public/private relations of totalitarian states and their typical official culture as well as the ensuing of a liberating discourse of resistance. That is, the in-depth look at public-private relations in totalitarian states, is concurrently a close look at a cultural understanding of such societies. The book is an attempt to challenge certain imperative issues and ideas that I have perceived as valuable enough to be reflected upon. It has turned out that these issues, as all social ones, are ambiguous and amorphous in nature, as well as historically conditioned which made them difficult to be interpersonally reasoned. Further, I construe the present Western societies as restless, temporal and often disoriented ones that await to be unraveled. Frequently, I have realized that the use of the available conceptual apparatus that can be critically applied as part of the analysis is limited, often faulty and reified. This book is the result of an effort to rise above the particular, to observe concerns from an alienated viewpoint, to reveal the underlying ix

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symbolism, to suspend judgments and to decontaminate the language from the tempting clichés. But above all to strive to distinguish the indeterminate order of a society that we all feel fearfully dependent upon and persistently undefended by it. Three chapters of the book were somewhat changed and adjusted for the purpose of this book’s publication, from chapters previously printed in two edited books. Chapters 2 and 3 were published as one article in Sandra Braman and Annabelle Srebereny-Mohammadi (eds.) Globalization, Communication and Transnational Civil Society, 1996. I would like to give my thanks to Hampton Press for granting me permission to publish my article “Media Charisma and Global Culture: The Experience of East-Central Europe,” in this book. Also, my gratitude goes to Sage Publications for giving me permission to reprint my article “The Dispersed Sacred: Anomy and the Crisis of Ritual.” The article was published in Stewart M. Hoover and Knut Lundby (eds.) Rethinking Media, Religion and Culture, 1997. I am thankful to Vadim Zakharov the artist who created the art exhibit Black Birds, whose installation process I photographed, and eventually was permitted to be reproduced on the cover of this book. Many thanks to Maria Tsantsanoglu, director of State Museum of Contemporary Art at Thessaloniki, Greece, who kindly mediated and facilitated the permission given to use the photograph. Upon completing this book I would like to extend my gratitude to several individuals who directly or indirectly helped with this project. First, I am profoundly indebted to the late Arthur J. Vidich of the New School for Social Research, whom I consider both a close friend and a mentor. Arthur cultivated my intellectual explorations with a great deal of interest. I miss him dearly. When writing the book I began to comprehend my true appreciation of the late Zygmunt Bauman of University of Leeds. I greatly benefitted from his ideas and from his way of writing theoretical prose. I was immensely influenced by his work. He served as an inspiration and a model of scholarly erudition and his books remain an immeasurable gift. I also wish to acknowledge my friend Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi of Haifa University, who was the first to motivate me to engage in the venture of writing this book. Through endless conversations while watching over our children during playtime, Benny generously offered helpful advice. x

Preface and Acknowledgments

I feel tremendously indebted to Ernest Krausz, a true friend and senior colleague of Bar-Ilan University and Netanya Academic College. With his gentle demeanor he consistently provided subtle advice and invaluable guidance. Our Wednesday discussions have become a tour de force of our identities and of our weltanschauung. I wish to extend special gratitude to Irving Louis Horowitz, chairman and editorial director of Transaction Publishers for his persuasive and helpful insights. Many thanks I would like to extend to Andrew McIntosh, senior editor in charge of the book at Transaction Publishers for his patience and careful guidance throughout the production process. I extend my sincere esteem to the Netanya Academic College for its magnanimity and support which it has displayed over the years. Finally, my deepest appreciation and affection is to my personal fierce critique, Oshrit Gelfand Barhaim, who accompanied this project with total dedication, insightfulness and endless love. June, 2011

xi

Part I Contemporary Cultures

1 Popular Culture: A Conception of a Vulnerable Social Order If any coherent image of social order can be drawn from the various themes and commentaries found in popular culture, then the image of a vulnerable social order stands out. Furthermore, it would appear that this common denominator shared by different popular cultural forms, represents a kind of implicit social denial. The social denial theme of popular culture suggests that the present social order, as a whole, is a vulnerable entity; this to be sure, is not a social or a political declaration, but an allusion to weakness, imperfection, and fallibility of certain parts or of the entire social order. The vulnerability of the social order is an ontological image projected from the experience of those who produce, consume, or identify with the various popular forms. In other words, to propose that social order is a fallible entity suggests that one’s undeserving, deplorable existence is the product of an imperfect world. Therefore, one’s insecure existence and discontents could be justified by the unreliable and frail nature of the social order in which that individual lives, and which is represented as such in popular culture. Furthermore, by presenting vulnerability as a palpable reality, it is implied that social life in the present is not finite, exhaustible, and closed, but just the opposite: the image of vulnerability assumes openness and therefore entails the fluidity of options and desirable changes. A finite and infallible social order would be a hopeless world, populated by trapped people and though this may be true, it is not reflected in the language and themes of popular culture. If anything, popular culture comes to “rescue” ordinary people from the despair of finitude and denigration. Bakhtin (1984, 47) says as much when 3

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he discusses the idea of the grotesque in the popular culture of the medieval Europe: we have already shown that the medieval and Renaissance grotesque, filled with the Spirit of carnival, liberates the world from all that is dark and terrifying; it takes all fears and is therefore completely gray and bright. All that is frightening in ordinary life is turned into amusing or ludicrous monstrosities.

Through their characteristically expressive and symbolic messages, the hidden commentaries of popular forms allude to a fallible social order. Naturally, the expression of social penetrability is derived and generalized from the various forms of the individual’s private disillusions. This may be expressed as sadness over personal dreams that failed to materialize, or nostalgia for youthful times that were full of hope and enthusiasm but faded away, as in so many pop songs. The fallibility of the social is symbolically and indirectly expressed in various genres through such metaphors as the perishable home, farewells, unfulfilled love, the desire for the unobtainable, painful departures, or the sex/violence theme as an explosive revenge of the impulses against sublimated conventions with their effect of an ostensibly stable and rigid order. The ubiquitous ironic, sarcastic, and cynical characters that appear in so many genres, movies, and popular stories consistently convey disdain for whatever or whomever is believed to be eternal, pure, and innocent; it is as if the cynical and bitter heroes know better “than us” that society is implacably corruptible. Simpson’s argument that “American popular culture contains a perception of the public realm as a moral chaos” as evident in detective stories, is pertinent here (1984). In sum, at its basis, the world of popular culture is a profusely unhappy one, but this is a disguised world striving to appear frivolous, joyful, and lighthearted, aiming thus to make forget or to console. Octavio Paz, the Mexican philosopher in an insightful analysis of the Mexican character in his book The Labyrinth of Solitude makes a similar point when he describes the compressed feeling of joy “exploded” at times of celebrations and rites of passage (1981, 5). The moments of joy are often touched by violence and passion for vengeance cumulated during days of hardship and degradation. Simpson, who observed that in detective stories the public realm is viewed as morally chaotic, came to the conclusion that “the motives of the central character are a mixture of respect for principle and a thirst for vengeance” (1985). 4

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The vicarious feelings of freedom, in fact a momentary outpour of catharsis, the thrill and the experience of “flow” that the audiences of a popular performance typically experience, be it at an amusement park or during the watching of soap opera, may be related to the unconscious wish for the indomitable social order to be “surprised” in its weakness; it is as though the ordinary individual has succeeded once more to “fool” his destiny, and triumphs unexpectedly over the expected and predictable. Evidently, the kinds of themes and commentaries employed to convey vulnerability in the popular genres are different from those officially organized popular events that harbor overwrought optimism and stress redemptive societal virtues (Menon 1987). The former consists of a category of cultural resistance while the latter is often a manifestation of ideology or the ritualization of the logic of social structure. The question of how individuals perceive social order and how consequently they react to such a perception is similar to the problem of theodicy raised by Weber. According to Weber, theodicy “consists of the very question of how it is that a power which is said to be at once omnipotent and kind could have created such an irrational world of undeserved suffering, unpunished injustice, and hopeless stupidity” (1971, 122). The possibility that this “power is not omnipotent” has been proposed by Weber as one among several possible answers to this question. This is precisely the raison d’être of certain phenomena of popular culture, inasmuch as they are directed toward social order and not toward an omnipotent religious power. In other words, if the divine power is substituted by the social order, as Durkheim has already suggested by observing this inherent transmutation of categories, and if Weber’s question of theodicy is reformulated with “social order” replacing the “omnipotent power,” then the idea of social omnipotence becomes a major challenge to be taken up by popular culture. Consequently, the character of popular culture is shaped by the response that social order is not only omnipotent, but also vulnerable. In sharp contrast, however, to various intellectual responses, such as overcoming vulnerability by introducing more rationality into social order, popular culture has no solutions to propose. On the contrary, any solutions, especially those forming coherent ideological projects and policies, are likely to become the targets of popular genres, just as the religious solution is likely to become their objective (Bar-Haim 5

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1990). The propensity of popular culture for a quasi-nihilism is inherent in the fact that its materials and the motivations for its production are supplied either by disillusionment with the social, or vexation and anxiety about its strictures. Popular phenomena are not means of salvation and therefore optimistic, but pervasively nihilistic commentaries on these means and especially on the “disenchantment of the world” (to employ another Weberian coinage used in the religious context [1971, 129–55]). The following remark by Eckhard Nixon who was a soap opera producer supports this thesis: In contemporary society, the mind viewing the small screen knows, if it knows anything, that life is not perfect, and that man has caused the imperfections. He caused them and must “suffer the consequences” – from a family quarrel to a global war.

Nixon goes on to argue that “audiences are bound, not by the chains of her worship, but by the easily recognized bonds of human frailty and human valour” (Newcomb 1974). Simpson’s observation is also relevant when he states: “mass media dreams allow us to depict the insufficiencies of our lives” (1984). Hence, it may well be that the inability to tackle the problematic and the absence of doubts, long seen as characteristics shared by popular cultural forms, are merely a resignation to the vicious yet weak nature of the social order. Justifiably or not, weakness and vulnerability are fundamental images of social order reflected in the ontology of the popular. If vulnerability is perceived as the pervasive underlying theme in representations of popular culture, one is bound to identify a corollary in the relationship between social and culture, that is between “the social” that motivates the representations and the “culture” that encodes them; the former provides the inspiration, the impetus, and the materials while the latter provides the symbols, the imagery, the expressive casts; the social is the condition for the appearance of popular cultural activities, while these, once produced, take on life of their own. Hence, one can argue that before a process of cultural mystification gets underway there is need for a process of social demystification. If social demystification is germane to cultural representations then those who produce, participate in, or simply passively consume popular phenomena cannot fail to recognize the allusions concerning the vincibility, so to speak, of social order. 6

Popular Culture

The cultural response to several major principles of the paradigmatic western social order, can provide the basis for a limited, nonexhaustive categorization that may help to clarify the fundamental theme that underlies forms of popular culture and to organize them. A few major categories of popular forms can be viewed as encoded commentaries on central features ingrained in the fabric of contemporary Western society. However, in the final analysis, each category of commentary grapples with the same common fundamental image of social vulnerability. For example, anecdotes and caricatures about “shrinks,” therapists, counselors, etc., among the professional middle class are an encoded cultural commentary concerning the anxiety over “colonization of mind and family,” i.e., the increasing dominance of the therapeutic ideology and its implications, by now a paradigmatic feature of Western middle classes. The semiotic key for understanding anecdotes and caricatures rests on the paradox of contrasts: the strong is the weak, the powerful is the coward, the pious is the hypocrite, etc. In other words, the premise is that there is no indomitable social role, social arrangement, or social definition. Everything pertaining to the social realm is imperfect and fallible, and as such it may also be ridiculous, absurd, and laughable. The middle class with their pretentions becomes a favored target of such anecdotes and caricatures. Historical precedents concerning the emergence of a popular forms as a result of specific ideological pressures are indeed numerous (Chambers 1986). A categorization of popular phenomena can be especially compelling if built upon a specific symbolic commentary keyed to specific traits inherently connected with the existing Western social order. For example, through representations of the asocial types such as spirits, the supernatural, extraterrestrial creatures, magical incarnations, and the like, the consumer of the popular attempts, in a sense, to cast doubt on the working reality of a present social order. Makebelieve narratives, such as tales of the supernatural and horror stories, are good examples of how popular genres point to the weak reality of social existence, by entertaining the prospects of a different order, a surrealistic one, inhabited by the fictional heroes of the fantastic. To a large extent, many forms of popular culture emerge through attempts to challenge the “natural image” of social order. Hence, a theory concerning the relationship between the social and the cultural should proceed from here. 7

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By its nature, the world of popular culture is anchored in the symbolic and expressive domain of the profane, therefore its messages are freer and more daring than if it were anchored in the domain of the sacred. That is, hidden or partly hidden messages of play and ludic expressions in the various forms of popular culture are free yet less committing, therefore their skepticism and assaults against the status quo are regarded as harmless (Handelman 1977). Popular cultural commentaries are geared to symbolically free “the fixed” and “the natural” of the social. Hence, popular phenomena are cultural interpretations of the sacred, socially reified in countless ideological objects and practices. It is relevant to note Aron’s observation (1970, 192): Interpretation is born of our contact with the object – an object which is not acknowledged passively, however, but which is simultaneously acknowledged and denied, the denial of the object being an expression of our desire for another human reality.

We have identified the conception of an imperfect and fallible social order at the root of popular forms. Yet, this analysis should properly be done in such a way as to bring to light its specific representations. Furthermore, such a specific representation also implies a certain hermeneutic that should be made explicit. Though, the fundamental conception underlying all phenomena of popular culture is basically the same, the category of commentary may vary: this conception is both symbolically and expressively presented. Based on this approach, we propose an nonexhaustive and limited categorization of phenomena of popular culture. Three major categories of popular phenomena can be distinguished; each of these categories is a symbolic-expressive commentary aimed at challenging a central characteristic of the contemporary Western social order viewed in the popular mind as a limitation, upon which a symbolic breakthrough need be effected. I label these three categories as follows: “The Imaginary Flight: Expansion and Extension of Social Space”; “Secular Supernatural: Chance, Luck and Fate”; and: “The Triumph of Physical Gifts: Ceremonies of Regression.” The Imaginary Flight: Expansion and Extension of Social Space The social position of individuals implies the social options that position entails. One might argue that in modern Western society 8

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the options available lag behind social aspirations and desires, and perhaps increasingly so ever since the Western European Enlightenment established a new relationship between the individual and society and between an individual and himself. Though social mobility and rapid technological changes motivate expectations for new and more opportunities, beginning with the 1960s there began an increasing disillusionment with the supposed limitless expansion of an ever-changing society. For one, it became obvious that neither social mobility nor technological changes can eradicate inequality and injustice and none expand absolutely the range of options. It has become a widespread belief in the five decades since, that whatever progress has been made, the newly formed social structure has already activated its own proper mechanisms of limitation. But while the disillusionment from the present order of things becomes widespread and daily experiences confirm a sense of entrapment, the post-industrial Western paradigm and its welfare-state democracy, continue essentially untroubled to harbor and cultivate the belief in social mobility. The yearning for another reality, as an attempt at symbolic liberation from the existing boundaries of the imperfect social universe, is one useful perspective for revealing the encodings of current popular forms. True, human beings need closure and boundaries to overcome the terror of chaos and much social theorizing proceeds from these premises. However, since human consciousness has always produced social boundaries and chaos has persistently been managed, social theory at present should focus rather on how individuals react when they feel suffocated by boundaries and entrapped by their everyday routines. How do people overcome the limitations imposed upon them by inexorable social boundaries? As long as the rules (or antirules) for surpassing them have not yet materialized—the mocking of rules, or inventing make-believe rules becomes the only strategy for denying boundaries. Many interpreters of popular narrative have identified in them a quality that symbolically transcends existing social boundaries, that is, a capacity to expand and extend social space. P. Kael (1980, 420) astutely noted the subversive quality of movies to transcend old meanings: “Movie art is the subversive gesture carried further, the moments of excitement sustained longer and extended into new meanings”… and then she went on to explain: “We want to experience that elation 9

Public–Private Relations in Totalitarian States

we feel when a movie (or even a performer in a movie) goes further than we had expected and makes the leap successfully” (421). By “going further” than the viewers had expected, the hero, (and he is such precisely because he is going further) has thus “liberated” his audience; he has succeeded in overcoming the social limitation that all are aware of by penetrating conventional barriers. His deeds elate the audience while the excitement he generates may reach out into new meanings; “suspense” inspires a sublimative confrontation and possible a reflective breakthrough. Popular representations provide a make-believe expansion of daily experience by employing materials and strategies that encourage a momentary disregard for limits and constraints. A good example is the “Western” genre. One may argue that by definition the Westerns must convey a sense of expansion, of going beyond the conventional frontiers. That is true, yet it does not explain the persistent popularity of the genre, especially considering its anachronistic topic and culturally bound location. It might well be that the Americanization of so many local cultures as a wide global phenomena, has its roots in the appeal of a universal mythology based on fictionalizing the perennial theme of prevailing over the limitations of social life (Strinati 1995, 21–31). Walter Benjamin who was among the first to offer a comprehensive critique of the mechanically reproduced and mass-produced art genres, understood the magic of extension created by film, though more than anybody else he disdained its artificiality. Benjamin (1969) observed that: “the film extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives.” He went on to add: our offices, and furnished rooms, railroad stations and our factories appeared to have us locked up hopelessly. With the close-up, space expands, with slow motion movement extends…. (236)

But the film is only one genre among other popular genres which touch on a similar underlying theme. John G. Cawelty (1976, 38) referring to archetypical formulas of popular narratives noted: Formulas are more highly conventional and more clearly oriented toward some form of escapism, the creation of an imaginary world in which fictional characters who command the reader’s interests and concerns, transcend the boundaries and frustrations that the reader ordinarily experience. (38) 10

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Z. Barbu (1976, 59) similarly insists on man’s “extension of his universe” as central to the sex-violence theme in popular novels. He argued: Admittedly, at the level of desire, to use a fashionable terminology, the sex-violence theme expresses a strong claim put by man to extend his universe, to suspend any predefinition of his existence, to dislocate anything that has been located, to undo anything that has been done so as to make available everything, in every place at anytime.

The examples of expansion/extension symbolism in popular culture genres, such as in fashion (Simmel 1971), advertisements (Boorstin 1962), pop celebrations (Menon 1987), etc., are too numerous to be quoted here. But this theme of transcending of social boundaries through expansion beyond existing possibilities or extension into new social space, may be part of a larger theme that characterizes popular expression; or, in the words of B. Martin (1983, 14): “it describes a framed moment in which some kind of experience of the infinite, the impossible, the unbounded, becomes both possible and real.” Symbolic extension and expansion are in fact liminal in their essence, conjuring up a sense of freedom; this make-believe freedom comes to “rescue” human beings from the despair of finitude in the social realm and from their denigration. As Fiske (1989, 69) observed in his study of popular culture: the signs of subordinate out of control terrify the forces of order, for they constitute a constant reminder of both how fragile social control is and how resented; they demonstrate how escaping social control, even momentarily, produces a sense of freedom. That this freedom is often expressed in excessive “irresponsible” (i.e., disruptive or disorderly)… behavior is evidence both of the vitality of these disruptive popular forces and the extent of their repression in everyday life.

The burgeoning of new popular forms and practices especially those associated with leisure time, such as mass tourism, and those associated with visual communication, such as interactive TV, video games, computer games, etc., are the product of recent technological changes. Placed in a larger sociohistorical framework, the expansive character of many popular representations is congruent with the 11

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atmosphere of late modernity succinctly described by Berman’s famous quotation (1983, 18): This atmosphere of agitation and turbulence, psychic dizziness and drunkenness, expansion of experiential possibilities and destruction of moral boundaries and personal bonds, self-enlargement and self-derangement, phantoms in the street and in the soul – is the atmosphere in which modern sensibility is born.

The conception of popular culture put forward here, is that under certain conditions popular genres create a culture of resistance, if not always a directly explicit one, by the very fact that they form a powerful commentary on various modern ideological manifestos, myths, ethos, and reified structures. This is still true even if one regards much of this culture as morally corrupting, meaningless, and escapist, as the representatives of the Frankfurt School and others argued. Popular culture may be considered as morally destructive and it is viewed as such especially from the perspective of intellectuals’ political and cultural sensibilities. But from the perspective of masses, who through frivolous popular manifestations express nihilistic sentiments toward anything belonging to power and order, these popular forms could also be seen having moral qualities and displaying complexity (Geraghty 1998). Hence, mocking, laughter, and vulgar or indecent allusions on the one hand and over-sentimentality on the other hand, are gestures of denial whose ultimate effect may be the affirmation of one’s dignity in the absence of any other solution. Yet, this itself is a definite form of resistance. High culture is a source of moral salvation only for the few, while for others, perhaps for the majority, it is an impenetrable system of social distinctions (Bourdieu 1979). An illustrative example is the comparison between the minuet and the waltz (Katz 1991), each of them encoding a very different social world, demanding different categories of learning and requisite skills and thus, producing different kinds of satisfactions. The waltz originated in the mid-eighteenth century as a stylized rejuvenation of a popular folk dance that employed as its central element the rapid round movement, the circle. The minuet, on the other hand, that also makes use of the round movements required some effort to learn its structure, which also reflects the social status of its participants. The waltz expressed equality and individuality; furthermore, the waltz intended to convey the feeling of freedom as well as enabling the 12

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meeting of diverse social groups performing the same vertiginous rounds together. Art forms such as classical music, classical dance, abstract art, and theater are likely to be alienating to masses of lower classes, employing as they do complex cognitive codes rather than emotional effects. If the social world is perceived as imperfect and is personally experienced as such, this realization is lamented by means of an overly emotional expressivity, that is, a basic, simple, and often vulgar emotional outcry. It is necessary to make a distinction between the representation of a self-protected imperfect social world and the contemplation of a tragic existential one. Popular culture represents the first, while so-called high culture addresses the latter. The imperfect social and the tragic existential worlds are not mutually exclusive, though they are rendered such by and large through of the effects of social structure. Contemplations of an imminent tragic human fate involve different cognitive and emotional prerequisites as well as different codes of expression as compared to the representation of a deficient man-made world. The illusion of expansion/extension is also achieved at a macro level. A sense of expansion is attained through what can be called “interspersing,” that is, a multiplicity of make-believe solutions that momentarily and sporadically transform the limited everyday reality into an inexhaustible one; everyday reality is punctuated by newly inventive and emotionally oriented occurrences. Contrived events, expressive in character and liminal in nature, stand in stark contrast to daily life with their conventions and habitual practices. Furthermore, many popular genres are based on a hyperbolic distortion of the ordinary, employing strong exaggerations such as cartoons, stereotypical jokes, the intense melodrama of soap operas, or dismal horror narratives; other genres employ the technique of blunt verbal abuse unleashing biting humorous critiques such as in satirical cabaret, or standup comedy. Popular genres demand from their audiences, even for a few moments, a different frame of awareness than that exercised ordinarily. Attention may be drawn to a billboard depicting Mona Lisa holding a bottle of perfume, or one might steer intergalactic battleships for a few minutes at the video game arcades. These constructed popular representations, whether dramatic or playful in nature, are as fleeting in duration as they are ephemeral in substance. However, they allow to move back and forth effortlessly 13

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between the inescapable necessities of daily life to the escapist genres. The intermittent movement between invariable daily routines and the interspersed popular genres, with their ever-changing fads and fashions have the cumulative effect of producing a quasi-limitless space, or even a sense of progression in an unconfined social realm. The controlled regularities of everyday life, interspersed with either the overly emotional drama or the vulgar laughter of the comical, for example, create the cumulative illusion of an open, tolerant, and inclusive social space (Allen 2001). The same is true when it comes to everyday routines that are punctuated by the perennial suspense generated by popular events such as rock concerts, beauty pageants, sports contest, civil festivals, and media events. Hence, interspersing is based on contrasts and juxtapositions, the result of which is a combination of unpredictable and too-predictable effects. Popular genres such as Westerns and detective flicks deliberately use a sudden change of time and landscape in the story, or an unexpected close-up often accompanied by dramatic music, following long shots of routine occurrences. The effect is to invoke possibilities beyond the taken-for-granted ones. One of the more frequent stylistic principles employed in these genres is bricolage, because of its capacity of achieving new effects as well as generating new meanings by improvising myriad combinations with the same recurrent elements. By producing new and unconventional combinations, bricolage enables ordinary significations to be surpassed while expanding the field of possibilities. The expansion of new stylistic possibilities with reformulations as well as with new uses ultimately amplifies the experience of enlargement (Hebdige 1979, 103). Another way to attain this illusionary sense of expansion/extension at a macro level, as has already been suggested, is through intermittent cycles of novelty. Expansion, as I have already argued, cannot be achieved with familiar elements that are conventionalized by social conformity without the ability to articulate a new commentary on the existing order of things. Therefore, to achieve the effect of expansion, from time to time the worn-out message must be rejuvenated with a new one, thus bringing out new and unexpected opportunities of expression. A new cycle, often in the form of a new fad, may be either genuinely new or it may be a redefined stylistic impetus, built around a certain novelty. Fads change the existing cultural location of popular genres with reference to new criteria, thus rearranging the available cultural 14

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arena so that new opportunities are tried out. The general feeling is that of continuous motion, triggering endless expectations, of swift cyclic movements between the outmoded and the fashionable, while still preserving a permanent state of a transitory, open field of new encodings. The inventiveness and ingenuity invested in finding new gimmicks and promoting new fashions “pays off,” and these fads “take off,” not only because of aggressive campaigns but also because they touch a profound desire for newness shared by many; they tap into a bottomless reservoir of curiosity for what may lie beyond the familiar. In many cases, a new fad is just a thinly disguised old gimmick—and yet, often this does not seem to make any difference, as if what it is important is the motion itself, and the tense expectation it creates. It is true that wherever imagination is so central as in the case of literary fiction or the popular fictions of visual genres, it will be used for evoking an “imaginary flight” beyond the familiar and beyond the limitations that define the conditions of everyday life. This entails a symbolic expansion of the ordinary, as the metaphor of imaginary flight indicates. One could raise the argument that almost everywhere and almost anything may spring a vision of flight in time and space, and this is undoubtedly true. Yet, our interest is in specifically defined genres of popular narratives, the consumption of which is an activity chosen among other available options. If these popular fictions are in demand and apparently they are, it is because they strike a chord. That is, the popular representations subsumed under the category of imaginary flight entail access to an expanded world, that responds to a paramount preoccupation of one’s consciousness. Put differently, a need exists for which a symbolic solution is required: popular narratives are best equipped to provide it. The Secular-Ludic Supernatural: Chance, Luck, and Fate Certain popular forms ontologically share a common denominator: they point unequivocally to the weakness of rationality as a central feature of the Western social order. Thus, the types of forms which invoke the extra-rationality or irrationality of the supernatural, as a generic alternative, indirectly state that the social order with its overwhelming emphasis upon rationality rests on vulnerable foundations. In the first category of popular forms—the narrative genres—the vulnerability of the social order is advanced on the grounds that the confines of social class and the limited opportunities ordained by class 15

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divisions, lead to the individual’s symbolic flights and also trigger impulses to break out of confinement, thus releasing the imaginary that lies beyond the burden of current social reality. The second category of popular representations implies that the sole acceptance of rationality as the premise upon which the present Western social order rests, can be shattered by the yearning for the extrarational or irrational, and by the unpredictable “surprises” of the supernatural. While the first category aspires to achieve of a sense of freedom, the second strives for a sense of surprise from the inexplicable. Beginning with Weber, who persuasively made the argument that modern society has become increasingly organized around the “goaloriented” category of rationality, it is now generally believed that the modern Western social order persistently resorts to various forms of rationality to legitimize the functioning of its institutions and hence social differences (1978). Rationality with its subtle pervasiveness, and as its corollary, the “predictability” of individuals’ actions, bestows upon the modern social order an indisputable legitimacy. It is this ubiquitous acceptance of rationality that stands out in modern Western society beyond the doubts and disputations that intrigued Weber. Yet, dialectically, it is precisely this unquestioned belief in the total affinity between the ethos of rationality and the late capitalist social order that creates an imminent sense of entrapment. It is an entrapment of human follies that corrupts the rational itself or in Collins’ phrase: “the non-rational foundations of rationality” (1982). In other words, the pretended rationality, with its technical, pseudo-objective vocabulary, inundates one’s life with a high degree of uncertainty from the start to the end, pushing individuals toward a search for the daily, nontranscendental extrarational of the late-modern society. As with the first category of popular cultural forms, which sprang from disillusionment with the promise of opportunities, so too the second category grew out of disillusions with rational–technocratic ideology as a major source of legitimation of Western institutions. The seemingly unassailable ethos of institutional rationality, especially in regard to social differences and alienation, was found to be flawed and hence questionable, particularly by the young. The student upheavals of the 1960s was merely a spontaneous eruption of an evolving process of collective realization that the ethos of rationality was largely a disappointment; its legitimation and interpretations were exposed to be just as ideological as any other belief system. The following four 16

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decades witnessed first a reactive withdrawal into apathy and later, in the America of the 1980s and 1990s, a degeneration into an insecure but conspicuous hedonism that engendered a new managerial– technocratic bourgeoisie: the yuppies. Unlike the first category of popular forms, that are representational in nature, the second one involves by and large real human activities that become representations of themselves. From the perspective of the individual, those categories of popular expression that invoke luck, chance, fate, etc., are the only permissible extrarational articulations of daily life, which are also widely publicly sanctioned. These also stand in stark contrast to various idiosyncratic superstitions. The emphasis on personal access to supernatural, while denying mystical or religious beliefs, and also harboring a ludic attitude toward any risks—increase demand for these forms. Herein lies, for example, the popularity of the lottery and of chance games of all kinds; but also astrology, mediumreading, healing movements, etc. Secular supernatural popular phenomena are liminal in essence, bracketing an activity and an attitude which is different from the ordinary and in direct contrast to it; this attitude is centered on a possible “surprise”— that is, the unexpected consequences of conjunctures whose logic is different from the standard. This logic proposes that any individual might become unexpectedly “the chosen one,” exempt from the ordinary rules—hence the effect of surprise strongly associated with these forms. The sense of being elected by a force beyond one’s control provides a magnified sense of surprise. In other words, it is the implausible victory of chance, luck, and personal fate over the rational principle of conduct that is celebrated; what it is hailed is a wishful “accident” conquering predictable social routines (Campbell 2000). While the symbolic illusion of freedom celebrated in the first category of popular culture forms possesses a certain danger in so far as the illusion might be perceived as possible and real, the perils of the second category seem inherently stronger in regard to the constructed illusion. That is to say, the accidental surprise may be perceived not as an intriguing exception, but as a personalized rule: a felicitous occurrence that befell on few individuals may be taken as a norm rather than a happy coincidence. Though this observation might be more pertinent to chance games, all the forms invoking fate such as horoscopes, clairvoyance, psychic reading, healing, and all variants of New Age, share the same fundamental principles. 17

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At times, the central element of personal fortuity is compounded by a sort of dogma that stresses self-control and self-perfection and, in general, outlines prescriptions for everybody to achieve a state of personal happiness. However, at moments of truth, when individuals claim that the necessary conditions for happiness were fulfilled and yet the happy moments eluded them, the answers dispensed by the “masters” claim both insufficient observance of rules, but also the indeterminacy of rules. These secular-supernatural popular activities are located, as I have already argued, within the framework of playful liminality. They include ludic experimentation with the esoteric as well as a self-curiosity and self-exploration in terms that differ from the ordinary, though not in the least tinged with reservation and doubt, self-mockery, and sarcasm (Handelman 1999). Their location within an experimental frame permits the internal contradictions of this category to be reconciled. Only under the definition of free experimentation and play, can secular attitudes harmonize with a supernatural sensibility; and only under this definition, could activities perceived as deviant and threatening be nevertheless tolerated and rendered harmless. Speaking from a broader theoretical perspective the discussion can be tied to Weber’s two incongruous poles: “merit” and “destiny” (1971, 275); these terms should be viewed as alternative answers to the same question of theodicy. The importance of the choosing between these alternatives is that eventually the choice is transformed into a way of life and receives a cultural representation. In the religious context concerning which Weber raised the question and articulated the choices, destiny was unequivocally favored over merit. Curiously, in the context of popular culture, the favored choice is invariably, as in the case of religion, also destiny, although popular forms project it onto the ludic domain, while religion refers destiny to the realm of the sacred. Furthermore, popular culture does not favor destiny merely as a transcendental concept independent of merit, like religion does. Rather, it favors a notion of destiny as a vengeful reaction against the violent imposition of rational–technocratic merit to which it becomes a symbolic counterpart. Writing from the perspective of strong beliefs in rationality, economic efficiency, and modern institutions, that encompassed the West from the mid of the last century, two prominent theoreticians of culture—Veblen and Caillois—regarded betting and games of chance as a deficiency of rational society. Veblen, who wrote the chapter 18

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on “The Belief in Luck” in his acclaimed “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” treated this subject in his analysis of Protestant America at the end of the nineteenth century; the belief in luck, he wrote, “is one form of the animistic apprehension of things.” Veblen further argued (1982, 277): But in any case it [betting] is to be taken as an archaic trait, inherited from a more or less remote past, more or less incompatible with the requirements of the modern industrial process, and more or less of a hindrance to the fullest efficiency of the collective economic life of the present.

He concludes with a predictable argument consistent of the spirit of his time: The immediate, direct effect of the animistic habit of thought upon the general frame of mind of the believer goes in the direction of lowering his effective intelligence in the respect in which intelligence is of special consequence for modern industry. (287)

Caillois (1979) analyzed games of chance among other forms of games and play in the beginning of the 1950s in France. In the intellectual atmosphere of post-World War II France, it was only natural for Caillois to see in games of chance, termed “alea” by him, a source of deviance from work and rationality which oppose the “unfair favor of fortune with the legitimate rewards of effort and merit” (157). Caillois goes on to argue in the same vein: In addition, chance is not only a striking form of injustice, of gratuitous and undeserved favor, but is also a mockery of work, of patient and preserving labor, of saving, of willingly sacrificing for the future – In sum, a mockery of all the virtues needed in a world dedicated to the accumulation of wealth. (157)

Caillois failed, however, during the hopeful decade of the 1950s to consider games of chance as a popular activity expressing resistance to the dominant Western social order; that is, he failed to regard games of chance as reflective of a powerful alternative logic confronting the rational logic of western social institutions. Had Caillois thought about games not only as forms of ludus, as he did, but as cultural representations that expressively echo individuals’ vicissitudes and anxieties engendered by the world of social action, he would have observed 19

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that games share with other forms of popular culture a fundamental ontological conception of the vulnerability of the social order. Consequently, the uses and, consequences of games should be viewed as signs and symptoms of such a historically determined conception. Not only are games of vertigo and mimicry-simulation “by nature in rebellion against every class of code, rule and organization” as Caillois says, but in the rationalized post-industrial times, games of chance are a form of resistance as well. This however is not a resistance “posed by nature against the perfect equity of human institutional goals,” but a commentary posed by individuals in reaction to the entrapments and deficiencies of social institutions. Caillois offered a categorization of games based on their distinctive ludic character that produces states of social suspense and their attendant pleasures. However, he limited himself to distinguishing between the various ludic elements they exhibit and the specific effects they created. Instead of elucidating his categorization in relation to the broader phenomenon of popular culture and its underlying motivations, it is reduced to an internal taxonomy of differences, failing to suggest its cultural significance in commenting on the inherent contradictions of the Western ethos and of the social structure. As Clarke and Critcher observed in analyzing leisure in capitalist Britain, members of all classes gamble and watch televisions “but where, when and how and why they pursue such activities have particular cultural meanings shaped by the social groups to which they belong” (1985, 44). If games of chance are representative of the second category of popular forms, then the behavior they generate must reflect some sort of social negation. Appropriately, Newman (1968, 17–33) who studied the betting shop, suggested that lower-class gambling is not motivated by relative deprivation or a desire to become middle class, but rather that the betting shop negated status distinctions. The betters, according to Frey, who interpreted Newman’s findings (1984, 116), “rejected the characteristics of modern, bureaucratic, middle-class society in favor of the traditional, working class subculture.” In summary, pondering the meanings of this category of phenomena, points us again to Weber’s polarities of rational vs. irrational and how these, to paraphrase him, provide the answers to the fundamental question of how one explains social order, in the light of so much injustice and suffering generated by it or inflicted in its name. Social order is after all a reified abstract concept; specifically, it is constructed 20

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through dominant ideologies, by certain types of institutions, a specific ethos, a pervasive social structure, a defined set of repeated values and principles. Whether social order is a cohesive and a coherent entity is debatable, though it must imply a certain internal coherency between its components as well as enjoy a measure of consensus. It eventually becomes a projected image that challenges people both in routine moments, as well as in times of reflection. Confronted by its effects, individuals are forced to comment on and interpret social order, to either justify it or to suggest its fallibility. Each mode of commentary inevitably resorts to rational, extrarational, and irrational concepts. Hence, when looking at the forms of popular culture that have emerged in Western societies, it can be argued that they often employ extrarational and irrational elements within a rational goal-oriented context and only this particular configuration makes comprehensible the fundamental theme of a frail social order. The juxtaposition of the two poles within a ludic frame of reference, rather than producing a contradiction or a mutually exclusive polarity, allows them to become intertwined and congruent, thus generating a unique commentary. The Triumph of Physical Gifts: Ceremonies of Regression If imaginary space is the medium employed by the first category of popular forms to imply the vulnerability of the Western social order, and the secular supernatural is the theme elaborated upon by the second category, the third category centers around human natural gifts, such as beauty, physical strength and even voice and any derivative qualities. Human natural gifts become a vehicle for commenting on the weakness of the working social order, by celebrating the alternative of unique, extraordinary physical gifts, as opposed to the machinery of the social in bringing about success, achievement, acclaim, and even happiness. The coveted effect is a sense of triumph, brought out by the identification with those few who possess those unique talents. If in the case of the first two categories of popular forms the suggestion of vulnerability was mediated by agents that are external to one’s own being, though they may be contiguous with one’s person (such as one’s expanded social space or even one’s destiny), in the third category one’s own individual’s being mediates these thematics. However, the aspect of the individual that is equated with accomplishment is his or her outstanding physical qualities. These are qualities 21

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that can neither be socially induced nor culturally duplicated, although qualities such as physical ability, strength, and certainly extraordinary talent in dancing or singing can be cultivated and enhanced. It is also true, that to a certain extent the physical gifts are co-opted by the social and therefore individuals are variously discouraged or made aware of them depending on the specific cultural context. Exceptional natural gifts certainly need to be discovered, paradoxically, by society which has institutionalized a full-blown system to detect potential, to commercialize talents and to claim propriety rights. Yet, there is still something indeterminate at their point of origin, a quality believed to be felicitously beyond social anchoring or reference. This indeterminacy may touch on Weber’s concept of charisma (Weber 1971, 245). Each and everyone of us, no doubt, possesses a unique personality, and yet, this is not perceived, as least in popular lore, as equally forceful as the uniqueness of physical characteristics. Because the basic inclinations of one’s personality are invisible and also because the question of what is unique and what is socially induced, what is individual and what is normative, does not have an unambiguous answer, personality cannot undercut the mystique of physically appealing beauty, or of physical strength and physical skills in the popular discourse. It is rather the perception of uniqueness, that is, of visible physical uniqueness, that can sow the seeds of hope, since it posits to some extent a way out of the oppressive ordinary comparisons which are based on socially imposed standards and on politically normative criteria (Featherstone 1992). The unique physical gift, that ostensibly innate aspect of the human being, is a symbolic source of promise and therefore, inherently appealing to popular discourse. The assumption is that the socialized character of a human being cannot truly elevate him or her beyond anticipated social vexations. Valuable physical gifts, however, may have the capacity to do so, although obviously this is the domain of the very few. Such gifts contain a quasi-divinely given hope to break through social boundaries and to enable people to raise defiantly above the inexorable order that controls them. Paradoxically, it is the objectified part of one’s being that triumphs over the subjectified part, in the popular mind. As mentioned above, the emphasis on exceptional uniqueness and the faith it ignites in the popular imagination, has some bearing on the concept of charisma as advanced by Weber. The common 22

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thread connecting these notions is the rejection of the standard, of co-reference and of comparison, shortly, of all social rational indicators. Physical gifts are therefore perceived as capable of acting as a fateful force. What in fact could be more mysterious than an endowed innate disposition of a particular individual? Charisma as Weber observed “can be, and of course regularly is, qualitatively particularized” he goes on to state, in sharp contrast to physical gifts, thus putting an end to our analogy that this is an “internal rather than external affair” (1971, 247). Veblen (1981, 295) also noticed the commonality between a person possessing “the sporting temperament” and a believer in creeds, explaining that, “the chief point of coincidence…[is] the belief in an inscrutable propensity or a preternatural interposition in the sequence of events.” However, there is a fundamental difference as far as we are concerned here between charismatic religious or political figures and, let us say, a beauty queen, a recognized model, a renowned athlete, or a rock singer. The followers of a charismatic leader subordinate themselves to him, expecting some form of transcendental deliverance if the cause is religious, or a radical reformatory change if the cause is sociopolitical. In contrast, groupies identify with those fortunate ones from whom they expect some form of “proof of victory” that they have defeated the demands, criteria, tests, and standards for success imposed by the social order; and the more expressive and ostentatious such a proof the better. Whereas the charismatic leader inspires promises for long-term fulfillment, the popular hero elicits instant solidarity from others that identify with him/her. The individual with outstanding physical gifts is likely to lose his appeal more quickly than expected, for physical exception is always a fleeting affair; in addition, the title of celebrity epitomizes the victory over social order, thus making its carrier symbolically superfluous at the moment of triumph. The exceptional individual is fully recognized as part of a social category, and immediately loses the popular perception of “victory” he or she has enjoyed for a short while—a typical process of routinization of charisma as Weber described it. Since there is no transcendental path through which the “promised land” can be reached and only a sense of solidarity and identification, celebrity is soon consummated, giving way to its next manifestation. This may be an explanation for the quick-changing pace of fads and fashion and the short-lived popularity of models, beauty queens, athletes, dancers, and singers. Thomas 23

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Mann in “Royal Highness” succinctly depicted the celebration of the vicarious victory: Yes, people felt happier for the sight of her… and the people’s hearts beat faster. Flowers and cheers met her, and it was clear that in cheering her the people cheered themselves, and at the moment felt elevated and believed in great things. (in B. Martin 1983, 153)

Martin (1983) in her discussion of youth and the expressive revolution seems indirectly to support the same argument: Within youth and rock culture the star performers become individual objects in which that impersonal, collective charisma is focussed. In this way very ordinary boys become mythic figures of giant stature. In a quite literal, Durkheimian sense they are the totems of or youth culture, incarnating the aspiration to liminality on the part of youth in general. (154–57)

Martin goes on to paraphrase W. H. Auden that the Star may be “Brute Fact” to himself but to his/her fans he/she is “a useful metaphor.” However, Martin does not seem to elaborate what kind of useful metaphor the star is, beyond the argument that the star acts as a totem of liminality. I assume that liminality is construed by Martin to mean “anti-structure,” a term that she herself seemed to favor in connection with youth’s expressive totems. To employ a metaphor, two different and parallel social roads can be imagined: on the one most of the people are “walking,” on the other few fortunates are “parading,” drawing admiration and identification from others. Those that are walking, with whom we are concerned here, suffer the vicissitude of daily life, conform to society’s tests and standards, make efforts to adjust themselves to whatever normatively is imposed upon them, and to gear themselves toward whatever rewards they might expect. The issue of rewards, is pertinent to our discussion, and warrants an observation. Material or social rewards in the post-industrial West have not been proven to offer any kind of solution to the present spiritual and moral crisis, certainly not the kind of rewards bestowed upon ordinary human beings. Thus, an inexorable gap opens up between social demands and pressures on the one hand and individuals’ expectations on the other hand. Since such a gap cannot easily be overcome in favor of individuals, one of the ways to deny the nonexistence of an immediate solution is to escape into the accessible avenues of popular 24

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culture. Reflecting on the dispensation of happiness and misery in the religious context, Weber makes the following argument: “In any case, the absolute imperfection of this world has been firmly established as an ethical postulate. And the futility of worldly things has seemed to be meaningful and justified only in terms of this imperfection” (1971, 354). Popular culture’s view of social order as vulnerable grows out of the assumption of an imperfect world. It is only based on this premise that the symbolically compensatory character of popular forms can seem to be “meaningful and justified.” Among the diverse repertoire of popular forms, the identification with a hero/heroine whose exceptional physical gifts triumph over the social is revealing. The term “hero identification” implies that those who identify with stars, would like to be capable of defeating society’s standards and references on their own terms. Since in practice such a wish of victory cannot be fulfilled by many, people cherish those who have succeeded in doing so, celebrating with them their personal glory, as a triumph over social rules and norms. In contrast to the admiring majority, the exalted few are selected by nature and thrusted upon social conventions. As persons, the celebrities are irrelevant: their message is in what they represent in the eyes of the others. Ultimately the confrontation is between the socially defined efforts that are tested, measured, and judged through the normative apparatus and eventually rewarded by it, and those extraordinary rewards obtained through natural gifts. The few who embody those recognizable physical gifts call to attention the absurdity of the huge efforts invested in achieving precarious lives that possess the qualities of an entrapment more than anything else. The way out, so it is believed, is accomplished only by the few endowed by nature, whose lives do not need to follow the long, degrading, and tedious road of conforming tests and self-marketing, but who can rise above them. In a larger view, in the post-industrial West, the cultivation of happiness correlates with the belief in the virtue of rationality. At the individual level, rationality means personal efficiency, and a practical orientation to solving life problems. The centrality of rationality at the foundation of the Western social paradigm, attempts to subordinate anything which is individually indeterminate to the rationally normative. Here, to employ another of Weber’s terms, lie the roots of the individual’s disenchantment with the social and simultaneously the enchantment with the magic of popular activities (1971, 51). Against 25

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this background, the popular preoccupation with a few exceptional individuals possessing unique characteristics of physical appeal is clearly antithetical to the Western paradigm. In other words, since the Western Weltanschauung applies continuous pressure to invent new rational ways and new practical means to tap into the sources of happiness, the body becomes one of the impractical answers suggested by the popular commentaries to the demands of these pressures; that is, in this case the rule of the popular is the inversion of the western ethos. But why is the body an impractical answer? The reason is because only the few can find in it a source of happiness and also, because the way they achieve this variety of this-worldly happiness, is ironically socially regressive. In the popular response, the body and its exceptional qualities becomes a celebrated object offered for view in various ceremonies such as beauty contests, sport tournaments, and to some extent in pop concerts and dance carnivals. All these affirm the potential triumph of the physical exception over the social. In a sense, all these events celebrate the body’s special gifts a de-subjectified instrument, thus commenting indirectly on the stressful demands of social life. In relation to the Western value of rationality, such popular events can be regarded as regressions into nature. It would appear that these ceremonies are not a locus of a celebrated social, to employ Durkheim’s concept (1961), but occasions to rejoice in a momentary victory over the social. In other words, when in one eventful evening or one glorious day the profane for a few brief hours becomes sublime, this occasion for jubilation is profoundly cherished, generating profuse sentiments. Two more aspects of this category of celebration confirm the argument that they highlight the regressive natural element, i.e., the individual’s physical gifts. These ceremonies generally center on the individual who becomes the hero due to some physical characteristic that causes him to stand out among his peers. What makes these ceremonies special is the overwhelming emphasis on the adulation of the individual’s impressive physical traits, in contrast to other popular ceremonies that focus on communal social values. These spectacles that symbolically celebrate the failure of the social, might easily induce the participants to slip into a carnivalesque “loss of self,” to use Bakhtin’s coinage (1984); such ceremonies therefore sometimes border on the ecstatic. These are not secular rites of social affirmation projected by means of totems. Rather, they are ceremonies of 26

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identification highlighting heroes, crowned for having defeated the anonymity imposed on ordinary people as well as the monopoly on fame instituted by the rich and powerful. This special combination accords a distinctive profile to these popular events. The second dimension is that these popular events affirm gender divisions, that is, beauty pageants celebrate women’s attractiveness while sports celebrate men’s strength. Though many women participate in professional sports, few succeed in those areas that require strong muscles; furthermore, women’s and men’s sport are kept separate, the latter always enjoying more popularity. In other words, the unique physical character of the respective hero or heroine is enhanced by the fact that they operate within the parameters of another natural division, that of gender. In fact, the individual’s unique physical character makes sense only on the basis of the primordial gender division (Schimmel 2001). Hence, the celebration of the male hero or the female heroine is also a solemnization of the first and the most basic natural division. One might rhetorically ask why celebrate the body and its natural division of gender if not to suggest that the gender division takes precedence over any other social one, a regression in and of itself. The message of beauty contests, for example, is that beauty represents the possibility that the natural order may overcome the social one. For young and mature viewers, many of whom are lower or lower-middle-class women, who may be subordinated to jobs in the service occupations, beauty pageants, are symbolic attacks on the social order, beyond the spectacle, leisure and catharsis which they may afford. Although in the United States, for example, mainstream televised beauty pageants make a special effort to give an appearance of a respectable middle-class show, and though a few features have been introduced to showcase the personality of the contestants, the contest’s overwhelming appeal to the lower and lower-middle-class women and the main focus remains the candidates’ physical attraction. Not that middle and upper-class women do not watch, participate in, or attend beauty pageants, however, it is argued here that one’s social position places a different emphasis in the reading of the event by either centralizing or marginalizing it among the competing representational events that demand personal identification and group solidarity. For young women with low paying jobs and few chances for social mobility or redeeming changes in their life-path, beauty pageants 27

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are very popular, speaking to the very center of their consciousness, evoking the most intense personal projections. For middle and upper-class women, the reading of the event is perhaps less central to their personal universe, or to the promise of future opportunities; furthermore, for these women the event itself may not necessarily be read as an occasion of nature triumphing over the social, as lowerclass women audiences would. In sum, certain dimensions of intensity, centrality, and exclusivity may differ among diverse readings, but not the pageant’s main message. We have advanced the view here that popular culture has primarily an overall, general appeal and that only secondarily does it carry a differential attraction corresponding to class divisions, or other distinctions such as cultural location, education, religious affiliation, gender, immigrant status, etc. This view is premised on the universality of the fundamental tension between individual and the social order that springs a perception of the fallible nature of social order. This perception is represented in various cultural forms that comment on the diverse aspects of human affairs. If we accept this universalistic thesis, then apprehension of the vulnerability of the social world is not the only characteristic of a particular class of society, or of specific historical processes. Nonetheless, different societies and historical processes may either encourage or attenuate such a fundamental human perception. For example, Bauman claims that the modern society “emerged out of discovery that human order is vulnerable, contingent and devoid of reliable foundations” (1992, XI). Modern processes may have sharpened awareness of it, but this fundamental realization existed before the advent of modern times and one may assume that it will continue to play a role in human consciousness in the future. Undeniably distinctions and differentiations do exist within popular culture, especially in how vulnerability is represented by popular forms, what the commentaries are saying, and finally how they are encoded. It is reasonable to assume that certain popular forms such as those described and analyzed here, appeal to certain groups more than others. Specific groups, with their own particular characteristics may become preoccupied in a search for the symbolical means with which to address a major concern, regarding a specific impinging social order. As for the interpretation of popular cultural forms, if one overlooks nuances and subtleties, one may generally contend that popular cul28

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ture aspires to simple and accessible codes. This means that popular culture is a source of significant meaning for numerous people, and that whatever else it may offer, its forms must necessarily resonate with the experience of many individuals.

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2 Global Culture: The Quest for World Self-Emancipation Prospects and Difficulties At the beginning of the second decade of the third millenium there is an appalling absence of worldwide sweeping social visions. The political ideologies of socialism and communism, in the aftermath of the fall of the former Soviet block, have lost any kind of attraction, even in the West. The social liberal democratic ideologies of West Europe standing for social welfare, free market, and strong parliamentarism seemed to be comfortably secure, though there is a persistent fading of interest and enthusiasm among their supporters. Even the once indisputable ideological force of the American capitalist system displays strong signs of disorientation and lack of vigor in light of countless and enormous problems America of the twenty-first century is facing. The ecological movements encounter difficulties in coagulating as forceful ideologies, while the neo-fascist European parties are still too insignificant, extreme, and marginal, at least for the time being, to enable mass attraction. Within this vacuum, extreme expectations, either apocalyptic or messianic ones, make inroads. Paralleling this popular quest, in the intellectual scene it seems that the concept of civil society on the one hand, and the global culture on the other hand, have become the most appealing sets of ideas. As far as the origin of global culture, Tenbruck (1990,198) correctly pinpointed the source of the “dream of a secular acumen” by stating: From an historical perspective it become clear fairly quickly that the idea of One World could only upspring from the ground of 31

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Christendom. Only in the context of secular remnants of this Christian theology of history could the idea of an equal and common development of humanity as the fulfillment of history be announced and welcomed…

Whether or not the Global Culture concept has a messianic disposition, its fundamental assumptions can be viewed as a continuation of various concepts and ideas derived from the Enlightenment period of Europe such as Liberty, Universality, Progress. The concept of a global culture presumes a higher order, a most progressive one, which propagates a universal fraternity rather than local conflicts. Further, the concept implies the liberation of individuals from the boundaries and constraints of all kinds of particularistic entities: national states, ideologies, ethnicity, political affiliations, regional alliances, etc. The idea of Global Culture is assumed to harmonize humanity and be the means to pursue individual’s happiness. As far as one regards the present historical conditions, there seems no better time than now to propose a metaentity that is bound to redefine humanity from the ashes of destructive divisions, by arguing for an imminent fate to all. The vacuum created by the disappearance of great ideological divisions inspires a quest for an all-encompassing global order. Such a quest is complemented by a prevalent sense of an unprecedented global economical interdependency as well as a common destiny in the face of nuclear threat, terrorism, and ecological disasters. In the past, various schools of thought and social movements, mostly from the West, have promoted concepts such as internationalism, universalism, ecumenism and recently transculturalism and transnationalism. All these, however, assumed an active cooperation between nations, states, and cultures and not a metaculture to which all other national cultures are subsumed. Though different than all these above-mentioned precedents, global culture is still difficult to define. Without getting into a deep analysis of its precise definition I will limit myself by distinguishing between “global culture” and its akin term “globalization.” While the latter term assumes a visible, concrete, and perhaps a conscious effort toward uniformization as well as the converging-modernization of institutions and of social organization (Robertson 1992, 135), the former presumes a similar interpretation of reality, an underlying consciousness, an understanding of what to encode as social reality as well as a common central mythology. 32

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All of these exist regardless of geographical distance and human diversity. Global culture is a deeper level of worldwide affinity than sole economic or political integration, though ever-changing and unpredictable in its ultimate character. That globalization has been viewed lately as a negative process may be a byproduct of economic opportunism that should not be confused with its primary ideals. Legrain (2003, B8) in an article that highlights the immense advantages of “cultural globalization” over those few, though not negligible negative economic aspects quoted John Stewart Mill: The economic benefits of commerce are surpassed in importance by those of its effects which are intellectual and moral. It is hardly possible to overrate the value, for the improvement of human beings, of things which bring them into contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar … It is indispensable to be perpetually comparing one’s own notions and customs with the experience and example of persons in different circumstances… There is no notion which does not need to borrow from others.

Global culture is nevertheless the outcome of an emerging reality that also had given rise, starting poignantly with the second half of the twentieth century, to a cluster of specific cultures aimed to provide meaning and sense where confusion to newness and complexity set in. These cultures, such as youth culture, leisure culture, media culture, consumer culture, and popular culture are intertwined, share common traits, and above all they overlap almost to an indistinguishable degree unless one finally analyzes them individually. These cultures have originated in and are an organic product of Western society and therefore it is more than legitimate to ask the question whether each of these cultures and especially the so-called global culture are not in fact instruments of cultural imperialism as they are diffused and transmitted to non-Western societies. In other words, is “global culture” not in fact a western product, aggressively marketed with the assistance of indigenous mediators who are making economic or symbolic profits and which sooner or later is going to be vengefully rejected by non-Westerners, or even violently replaced by a resurgent religious-fundamentalist culture? The prominence of this cluster of cultures is connected with the collapse of ideologies. As a result, the popular expressive modes that encode commentaries on the Social have become more notable. 33

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Often the commentaries are intended to be subversive, certainly the debate whether these cultures are “cultures of resistance” or instruments of preserving the Social status quo will go on for a long time. However, what can be argued is that if global culture is distinguished from globalization, then by definition it subverts national cultures. Whether this is possible, and whether global culture, believed to be not a utopia but a realistic process that reflects deep and radical changes will eventually subvert the national cultures, is the central question addressed in this chapter. I would also like to point out some of the many difficulties that can be anticipated in the realization of a global culture, as well as under which conditions it can be facilitated. Global Culture and the Demise of Social Structure A major source of difficulty in the formation of a worldwide culture is the national culture (Smith 1990). In holding the symbolic means to bestow identity upon a collective of individuals, the national cultures generate both powerful mythologies and spellbinding visionary projections. The generative force with which national cultures are capable to invent collective memories, with mythological events and heroic figures, as well as the drive to construct elaborated visions of posterity, become the major obstacle in breeding a supraculture, though structurally is a universal phenomenon. Thus, Smith (1990, 183) succinctly observed: To this day the survived monuments to be fallen, the ceaseless ritual of remembrance, the fervent celebration of heroes and symbols across the globe, testify to the same impulse to collective immortality, the same concern for judgement and solace of posterity.

If collective memories are actively circulating the past and collective posterity are zealously promoting future visions, it is the social structure of a society that pulls them together into the present, by bestowing upon them significance and relevancy. It is through the social structure of a society that locality is constructed and only through it is any sense given to the collective identity. That is, social structure, is antithetic to what global culture seems to denote. If the notion of social structure as it is known to us, is an abstract of a Hobbesian world, characterized by conflicts, antagonisms, hostility, divisions, and power struggle, all taking place within a specific local history, 34

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and if global culture presupposes cooperation and aspirations for an universal order then the two stand in contradiction. The notion of global culture, as traditionally is employed, assumes an almost utopian character of a society in which social structure is either absent, or something altogether different that we have not yet experienced and our thought cannot conceive. Therefore, social structure makes sense only with the limits of a certain locality, defining and being defined by its divisions and distinctions, it creates and it is being created by local groups, and just because they know and experience each other they participate passively or actively in an arrangement over the local resources. Over time, local histories and symbolic appropriations would make their own contribution to the consolidation of social structure. With no connections to a locality but with universal aspiration, connected to the unknown and the inexperienced, global culture cannot produce a similar construct as the familiar character of the present social structure; while the theoretical possibility of a “global village” with one encompassing social structure is inconceivable since it will resemble a local order only on a global scale. Such an entity has more in common with an worldwide empire than to what is assumed to be defined as a global, universal order. If the Social has at its core the social structure, and if this stands in contradiction to universal culture, then one could assume that a constituted global order will mean the demise of the Social as we know it. Whether it is possible to entertain the idea of a different Social, not defined by a concept of social structure as we presently experience it, seems for the time being to remain well within the domain of utopian writings. Conditions for the Emergence of Global Culture It is not too difficult to argue against the prospects of a culture that will spread around the world; yet, it is perhaps more important and may be also more problematic to discern trends that indicate some kind of movement toward a coagulation, however, embryonic it may be, of such a world culture. Again, the issue at heart is not Westernization or even Americanization; however energetic and attractive, American or general western culture might be, they are bound sooner or later to ignite local fundamentalist reactions that will do anything possible, even resorting to violence to manipulate the local patriotic sentiments of the populations, as we are presently witnessing among Islamic nations. Even the Western European countries, after so much 35

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common history and mutual cultural familiarity, and with already common suprapolitical and economic institutions, still maintain xenophobic suspicions one against the other, not to mention the antiAmerican culture protest movements in many European countries, and in France especially. The crucial question is how a supraculture, not connected with any locality but common to all, can emerge. Such a culture, one may presume, in spite of influences, will be an entity that is foreign and unrecognized to our present habitual analytical perceptions. Regardless of that, speculations are made, thus Smith (1990,176) ventured in an attempt to synthesize what he believes to characterize global culture: A global culture, so the argument runs, will be eclectic like its western or European progenitor, but will wear uniformly or streamlined packaging. Standardized, commercialized mass commodities will nevertheless draw from their contents upon revivals of traditional, folk or national motifs and styles in fashions, furnishings, music and the arts, lifted out of their original contexts and anesthetized. So that a global culture would operate at several levels simultaneously: as a cornucopia of standardized commodities, as a patchwork of denationalized ethnic or folk motifs, as a series of generalized human values and interests, as a uniform scientific discourse of meaning, and finally as the interdependent system of communications which forms the material base for all the other components and levels.

Smith’s base for this description seems to be indisputable and exclusively western, there is nothing African, Asian, or Latin American about it, for instance; in other words, the progenitor of the global culture is explicitly the western one. Language reflects a level of development that Western society has reached, while the assumption being that the entire globe will eventually catch up. Hence, according to Smith, this level of development is first and furthermore technoelectronic and capitalistic oriented toward commodification and consumerism (177). Finally, an unspoken assumption in Smith’s argument is that global culture cannot evolve as long as the entire globe will not reach a western stage of development. It is infinitely easy to envisage a globe which has uniformly attained a high level of modernization and urbanization, a planet that shares a similar form of democratic political system, as well as a world in which there is no regional or supraregional conflicts. But such a scenario, however plausible as any other, appears to be a remote possibility. It is, 36

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however, more realistic to imagine a globe with disparate societies in their process of modernization with diverse political systems, and a globe always frightened by powerful conflicts that could always get out of hand lending to wars and genocide. It seems reasonable to believe that a global culture, on the other hand, presupposes a free market economy and free trade, a widespread urbanization and a world with a predominant middle class. A global culture is not a “deus ex machina” new reality, but a long and torturous struggle for nonhegemony though, it does not mean, however, that there will be no continuous struggles for doctrinal domination; beyond anything else, global culture will reflect an allsweeping process that holds the people of the world indomitably captive by an omnipotent interdependence—beyond the will of a certain individual society. The present period is characterized by a crisis of the Social and a dismal absence of its interpretation: a relative lack of attractiveness by any existing ideology that can coagulate in a worldwide consequential social movement, an absence of major ideas that interpret reality, a lack of sets of referents that can define morality and norms, and a vacuity of inspiring potent visions, thus leaving a void that is filled by anxious fatalism, dangerously excessive individualism, and self-defeating classification. If culture in general comments on the Social, capturing its difficulties, then global culture makes no exception by highlighting at any given point in time the present juncture of the Social. The present Social is characterized to be, among other things, an anomic state and in such times culture is likely to overrun the retreating social (Hilbert 1986). The vitality of culture in such anomic period is as such that, for example, much of the public agenda turns into narratives, ideas are foremost perceived as metaphors, historical events becoming legends or personalities emerging as mythological heroes. New symbols are invented while old metaphoric repositories are rediscovered; culture wars and clashes of civilizations have become major sources of explaining interregional conflicts. Theater, film, and popular song, for instance, reaches an upsurge and its play story and lyrics are intensely followed as they are regarded more than any social project as relevant and inspiring; cultural genres are perceived as more stimulating perhaps than many social movements while everyday life in its turn is viewed as a theater, that is somewhat real, but nonetheless understood if only dramatized and especially televized. The distinction between political–historical events, on one hand, and fiction, on the 37

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other hand, is blurred: life often imitates art, and the latter heavily burdened by expectations for spiritual guidance, crumbles. Highlighting the disjunctions and the contradictions of modern capitalism, Bell (1978]) put the finger on the cultural implications of the anomic trends in the Western contemporary capitalist society; he advanced the argument that “the culture has taken the initiative in promoting change (XXV) and that “the legitimation of social behavior passed from religion to modernist culture” (XXIV). The argument is too complex to be elaborated here, requiring a treatment in itself, however, there are two general corollaries that spring from here: the first is, that global culture, both the reality of it and the discourse about it, is a byproduct of a postmodern society, characterized by a permanent “built in” anomie (Baudrillard 1983); and the second, raises the possibility that some cultural elements could develop in a global scale without globalization as a precondition. This latter conclusion could, for instance, explain both the receptivity and the interests of non-Western people in western media, western leisure activity, etc., and vice versa, it throws light on western avid receptivity of eastern philosophy and mysticism, Japanese theater, African music, etc. The danger is, a belief that receptivity and even adaptation of one cultural form by the people of a different society is as simple as it may sound. Far from it, the receptivity and the consumption of the imported cultural form is, to say the least, recontextualized and transformed by the audience in order to make sense of the indigenous social forces as well as of the local traditions at work. For example, one would assume that for the people of Mumbai to fully understand an American TV show they should share with the western audience a specific social structure as well as its particular ethos. In fact, what takes place is a selective reading of the TV text by Mumbai viewers, according to their familiar local categories. The permanent state of quasi-anomie in the post-industrial western societies becomes a favorable condition for receptivity beyond the national cultures of each society. In addition to Western societies can be added a group of countries in the Far East such as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and even China, especially because of their intensive trade, tourism, cultural exchanges, and in general intertwined economies with the West, but also because of many of them adopting a parliamentarian political system, with the exception of China, have underwent significant changes in opening their cultures to western 38

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and other influences. Reports describe the young generation of these countries as undergoing a process of liberation from the conformity to their national culture to such a degree that they seem eager to embrace, western youth cultural repertoire. Similarly, is the case of educated women, middle-class professionals, intellectuals, and businessmen. It would be a mistake to consider large segments of population of the Islamic countries being beyond the reach of global influences and recalcitrant to the under-streams of the Western culture. The temptation of a nonreligion, free, diverse, individualistically oriented and dynamic culture of the West is more appealing than the Islamic ultraconservative leadership would like to admit. The ongoing upheavals in Spring of 2011 in the Middle East are evidence of this. This brief conclusion was articulated and written long before the recent Facebook revolutions, with the portended origin and character of these historical events. The magnitude of the importance of especially the western popular culture, particularly upon the youth of the Middle East, but also of Indonesia and Pakistan, has become so potent that is perceived as a major threat by Islamic doctrinaires and the main reason for a Jihad by militant fundamentalists. One could focus on each one of the global regions and presently detect an unusual openness to experiment with elements from other cultures, to freely explore and unapologetically adopt the cultural patterns of others. As a prerequisite for paving the ground of a supraculture, such a trend is encouraging and hopefully is not only a reaction of a post-nationalistic world, but a deeper global process though manifesting itself differently in each world block and with the West taking the lead. If indeed there are times when global cultural differences are expanded by nationalistic ideologies and times when such differences are minimized, then we certainly are living such an historical period when differences are not impediments in opening up to new cultural structures. Individual cultures are not only positioned in a noncompetitive relation to others, but there is also a strong undercurrent that forces people beyond a mere curiosity to familiarize with the culture of others, there is a need necessitated to some extent by the growing worldwide interdependency and not only economical. Implications of Persisting Anomie The effects and repercussions of persisting anomic trends taking place simultaneously in many societies, is perhaps a subject that should 39

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be analyzed in its own right. As far as our subject is concerned there are three interrelated implications, each one of which can be regarded as contributing to the receding of local traditions, rendering these traditions less important than they were before, while preparing the ground for receptivity to other cultural structures, which one day may become the base for a universal civilization. One of the effects of the persistent quasi-anomie of the contemporary society is the gradual erosion of the present social structure that has already been mentioned, as the major obstacle in the formation of a universal culture. The cumulative effect of such erosion, not its disappearance but a process of profound changes, becomes a chief cause in the formation of a critical mass of locally alienated individuals who presumably would regard themselves neither emotionally attached to the local traditions nor obliged to reproduce its practices. If those western intellectuals, with their alienated character and cosmopolitan orientation, were the epitome who historically defied the exclusivity of local traditions and have defined themselves in universalistic terms, then, one may presume that over time new social groups will join to share a similar orientation (Hannerz 1990). During the last three decades in the West there have been increasing signs that professionals, middle class, educated women, and youth, especially college students, join intellectual groups in describing themselves in terms which proclaim a perspective that goes beyond local categories. It is also encouraging that since the Second World War, large parts of intelligentsia of various non-Western societies, such as East-Central Europe, Latin America, India, and even Japan, distance themselves from the rooted reactionary nationalism, while harboring a liberal tolerant attitude toward other cultures. It is unclear whether one can possibly make an analogy between a small alienated group, such as intellectuals that perhaps because of the alienation became critical of the local traditions and more universalistic in their orientation than others, and an emerging alienated professional middle class. Yet, the present interdependency of the worldwide market economies that is already in the process of restructuring the knowledge apparatus while having profound repercussions on professionals’ education, job ethic, and personal work stability, is likely to turn the professional middle class into an altogether different group than has been known so far. Whether it is possible to turn an elite perspective of the privileged few, i.e., the global perspective of intellectuals, into a consciousness of a large mass 40

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of professionals whose chief characteristic is being alienated is worth pondering. Historically, we may be witnessing for the first time the plight of a large, literate, highly technologically trained mass of people that are interdependently connected to the global economy, increasingly disillusioned with the present local collective structures, particularly with the void left by the disintegration of the traditional communities. This large group of new middle-class professionals find themselves frustrated by class and political impediments in the realization of personal style of life and social ideals. As for the present, some of them seem to confront their perplexities with spiritual explorations, especially the kind of nonreligious spirituality imported mainly from the Far East Asia. The tragic tale of western intellectuals, at least since the nineteenth century, is that of a relative small group of privileged, but alienated individuals who could not persuade the masses that personal disenchantment and social injustice are connected, nor that sociopolitical deprivation is an evitable, nontranscendental phenomenon. Furthermore, what was more disappointing is that they have failed to point out the inability of locally generated collective representations with their sacred symbols, myths, and cosmologies, to address these themes. Though Marx attempted to do so, his ideas, vocabulary, and even metaphors were to a large extent devoided of emotional, individualistic, irrational, and spiritual categories to which large population could have related. The persistent condition of anomie and its effect on the stability of social structures is eventually bound to force a redefinition of the Sacred, to employ Durkeim’s term, and this is the second implication of anomie in preparing the conditions for a global culture. There is no guarantee that the redefinition of the Sacred will fall within the range of interpretations that place globality as both an axiological and cosmological ideal and thus, encouraging aspirations and activities toward that. However, considering the present conditions, there is a higher likelihood than it was in any other preceding historical times. The redefinition of the Sacred could be connected with Weber’s usage of the concept of “theodicy.” Smith (1990, 182), who also picked out the notion of theodicy as crucial in understanding fundamental social changes, has made use of it in his attempt to show the strength of national cultures and concluded that “with the dissolution of all traditional theodicies, only the appeal to a collective posterity offers hope of deliverance from oblivion.” 41

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Smith’s pessimistic conclusion may have strong roots in his appreciation of the power of nationalism and ethnicity, and though it is difficult not acquiescing with him, some trends that may have the capacity to counteract the national cultures seem to be somewhat ignored. If it is assumed theoretically that the traditional theodicies stop providing satisfactory answers to an increasing mass of alienated individuals in a desperate quest to make sense of the perplexing reality surrounding them, while the “dissidents” for globality become more persuasive than before, then locality becomes vulnerable, weaker to sustain a growing heresy. If humanity as a totality were capable of generating one singular global totem that commends by its awesome power the beliefs of people and therefore becomes the unifying force that no divisional and particular beliefs can challenge it, then the world would have found its Center from which all are inspired and to which all are drawn. If in the past totems, by representing collectivities, strengthened and provided sanctified boundaries, the multitude of these totems produced also many strong collective identities which inevitably were bound to collide one with another. The possibility of creating one global totem, may suggest the answer to how humanity will find itself gripped by the same power and connected by the same abinding vision. The last implication of anomie that relates to our subject touches on the concept of public sphere. The argument that I would like to put forward is that the persistent state of anomie leading to both the erosion of a stable social structure as well as the delegitimation of the nation State, is likely to expand the public sphere; that is, the emergence of a free and tolerant space and not an extension of any of the traditional instruments of locality, such as, State, Religion, or Ethnicity. Such a public space would dissolve the local collective categories into a multiplicity of nonpartisan publics, civil spaces such as media events, secular celebrations, grass roots festivals, leisure activities, civil social movements, consumer organized protests, nongovernmental organizations, and youth educational and sports settings that co-exist in most of the cases and even complement one another. Since the public sphere is believed to be a nonhegemonic space, recalcitrant to ideological and sectorial manipulations, it will facilitate the embracement of a new cultural orientation. Still, political messages are continued to be conveyed, but transformed into myriad of nonsacred/nonprofane public signs. 42

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If there are times when the Social turns the Culture into its object, the existence of a large public sphere may turn the Social into an object of the Culture and in the process, unravels the vulnerable local mythology of the Social. The result could be, that for the first time in the modern age, at least since intellectuals have been acknowledged as a social group, their critical discourses against instrumental ideologies could receive wide public attention. As argued, a neutral yet active public space will become an ideal meeting place between an alienated mass of middle-class professionals, in quest for new solutions to increasingly acute everyday problems, and those critical intellectuals aspiring to universal values and to a praxis with global focus in a civil society. Yet, it is not too difficult to envisage also a degenerative situation of return to old habitual impulses, a scenario in which alienated populations turn for a secular salvation to a new promising ideology, that in time will extend itself into a viable nationalistic territory while the universally oriented intellectuals will become again an isolated, marginal group. If so far has been treated the possible impact of a persistent state of anomie on the formation of conditions that may lead to a world culture, it is also worth mentioning a factor that could similarly reduce the power of localities while contributing to increase of global cooperation to a point that it may force unprecedented fundamental change. A major difference between the present times and any other preceding historical periods is that the present humanity has the potential of causing cataclysmic events of a magnitude that could annihilate large parts of the world. Never in the past could humanity have brought about total destruction on itself, as it has the capacity to do it now. These cataclysms are inflicted either directly and purposefully by man on man such as nuclear war, mass destruction terrorism (i.e., 9/11), biochemical incidents, or major catastrophes indirectly caused by man on its environment, for example, the recent Fukushima radioactive accident, lethal pollution, global warming, AIDS, SARS, Swine Flu, etc. If anomie could gradually induce favorable change for a supraculture, human-caused cataclysms may effect such sudden shocks that will necessitate an unprecedented cooperation, such as in the case of the SARS epidemics in China in 2002. Fatal events require intensive and permanent widely international interaction, as well as cooperation at all levels at once, of all societies and their individuals, in order 43

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to solve large-scale problems of survival. For the time being, much of the international interaction is limited to a cooperation based on political, military, or economical constraints at high levels of governments. Most of the global population and especially local authorities have begun to show signs of involvement and cognizance of the need for a new type of cooperation. The fundamental consequence of large-scale man-caused disasters that bear on pre-conditions leading to a universal culture, is not only that they force cooperation out of which a new-world culture may evolve, but also that they compel suddenly and without negotiation an interruption of the habitual stream of anthropo-historical consciousness. Profound changes in the habitual consciousness which affect both the collective memory and collective posterity is an absolute necessity if a vital supraculture should arise. One would assume that such was Marx’s strategy when he argued in favor of a violent overthrow of those in power and a period of a proletarian dictatorship (Tenbruck 1990, 202); though, past application of Marx’ arguments has brought about disastrous results that in long range have also achieved ascerbic localistic strifes around all kinds of social groups and around all kinds of vengeful causes. In summation, if we place the individual at the center of analysis we can observe that currently there is still little in the ordinary experience of a majority of individuals anywhere in the world, that either forces him or gently leads him to consider a belongingness to one-world civilization and to a single universal identity. If one, however, in the process of maturation will come to reflect about such a possibility, then that person must resort to imagination, fantasy, and dreams, all of which are materials and states of the unreal. The question is whether it will ever be possible that the sociohistorical conditions of all societies be as such that in the ordinary development of their individual citizens there is a strong need to contemplate life in one-world civilization without escaping into unreal but as a natural development of one’s identity. Or, is it only in the unreal that human can relate to universality as well as can produce a supraculture. The rise of the intellectual preoccupation with a worldwide culture is perhaps symptomatic of the crisis of Social which seems to become so blurred in its vision, so heteromorphic in its character, so eluding to any familiar reference. If the habitual real is not any longer local, then “the real is global,” to paraphrase Hegel and his famous words that “the 44

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real is rational.” Whether a global civilization is realizable in the end is hard to predict with certainty; what is, however, more discernable is that there are new expectations for infusing universality into the narrow obsolete and disappointing locality, after humanity seemed to subordinate for too long the universality to national cultures, even to the point of the former becoming negligible. However, is that only a matter of balance and if so why in the present time? Can it be that we are facing a profound and radical process whose signs we only observe: a permanent condition of late modern anomie that requires to be channeled and reduced, an expansion of public space that renders previous “monopolies of power” inefficient, a growing internationalized middle class, a redefinition of Sacred in the face of a total nuclear holocaust, an unprecedented interdependence, an intensification in the worldwide communication. All these point out to the strain on national entities, as well as the vulnerability of their precepts. The process at work then may be analogical to the “civilizing process” argued by Elias to explain the development of the West (1978, 1982). Though, it was Elias who described in the 1930s the feasible evolution of a global civilization, he did not believe in an utopian world, inhabited by happy people who cherished the salvatory “end of history.” For Elias, as long as the world is populated with living individuals it is subjected to competitive struggle for survival and in this dynamic world, mass annihilation is all too possible, especially in the present nuclear age. Yet, this is only a possibility, whether valid or not it depends on so many factors that only a theology of a sort could propose an answer. In the meantime and until anything else unfolds, the world witnesses a moment of self-emancipation.

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3 Media Charisma and Global Culture: The Experience of East-Central Europe The arguments that mass media are either active agents in bringing about instrumental change toward a global culture or that mass media accurately reflect and diffuse underlying ideas that indicate a global trend need to be challenged. The question that should be asked is to what extent mass media inherently create an artificial universal culture, especially under the present conditions of Western societies. In other words, the question is whether, in the present quasi-anomic condition of late-modern society, it is the nature of contemporary mass media and the type of its textuality that provide an apparent emergence of a global culture. Specifically, the first part of this chapter discusses the “charisma” of media and its implications for an apparent global culture, as well as the fictional nature of the media text and its implications for our question. The second part of the chapter consists of a few brief remarks on the social structure and conditions that underlie the possible formation of a dominant nonnationalistic public opinion in East-Central Europe. I ask what the public expects from local East-European media under the present circumstances and describe briefly how the media fulfill those expectations. There is no doubt that we are witnessing an intensification in all dimensions of international exposure and exchanges. This exposure filters down not only to the professional middle classes, but also to the working class and rural populations. It is true that the “official” language of this international exposure is, most of the time, English or other Western languages. However, a great deal of exposure and 47

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exchange is carried through the profuse world of goods from all over the world that surround even those who live in the most remote places. Beyond any functionality, these goods are a medium of communication about different cultures as well as about the world as a totality. Yet, when people exclaim in awe and wonderment that we live in a “global village,” what they have mostly in mind is the world of mass communication. The charisma of the mass media is derived from two major sources. The first is the popular perception that the media are “connected” with the “center” of society, wherever that may be, and therefore “know” what takes place at that “center.” This is the sense that the media know what is most important and what is trivial, thus validating a certain version of reality that in most cases preserves the familiar status quo; hence, the belief that the media are touched by some kind of secular sacredness. The sacredness spills over into expectations for both ethical behavior, such as guarding the underdog and disclosing the corruption of the powerful, as well as into expectations for forecasting, however ambiguous or even farfetched that may be. In short, the media are expected to be “moral oracles,” and, in the absence of competitors, traditionally produced in the past by popular beliefs, it is not a small role to fill. The second factor contributing to the charismatic aura of the media has to do with the assumption that the media attend to what is actual and immediate, a reality from which none can escape. In a world in which the rate of change of events and information is so high, the latest information has an advantage with which nothing can compete. The actual information represents an objective reality, as it were, awarded by the force of the present as opposed to a reality mediated either by interpretation, as that of the past, or touched by uncertainty, as in the case of the future. The rapidity with which international media networks are capable nowadays of conveying the most current information from all over the world adds a new dimension to its charisma, that is, a sense that the media are connected not only with the center of society, but also with the center of the globe. Whether there is a global order with a definite center or not, the media give an impression of the existence of such an order. Affirmation of such an order is carried through daily international news; documentary programs on various parts of the globe such as ecology in India or business in Japan; international cultural occasions such as the Cannes’ film festival or the 48

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Ms. Universe Beauty Pageants; and through special media events such as rock concerts in support of the victims of famine in Ethiopia, the opening of the Olympic Games, the Earth Summit in Brazil, or the launching of the last spaceship. The international news and stories originating in the West are presented from a Western viewpoint, having in mind the sensibilities of the Western audience, Western achievements, Western philanthropies, and Western taste (Howes 1991). These are in essence glorifying celebrations in which the non-Western are kindly invited to join. Furthermore, annual international media events paradoxically emphasize the divisions by country more than anything else. Organizers make a special effort to positively advertise the individual culture of each of the participants, as in the Eurovision Song Contest or Ms. Universe Beauty Pageant. International events are contests and competitions, inspiring drama with heroes and heroines. Dayan and Katz (1994) regard these media events as rituals articulating national consensus. Elsewhere, Katz (1994) poignantly observes that television broadcasting in most nations serves as a medium of national integration more in the sense of offering a shared experience and of introducing different population segments to each other than as a medium of culturally authentic self-expression. Indeed, it seems that many of the international events initiated and carried mainly, but not only, by the electronic media serve the needs of the educated Western middle class, especially Americans, for a broader and yet unthreatening international experience; an experience that sustains the supremacy of the middle-class American way of life, yet aspires to supersede its narrowness. The need for a cross-cultural experience forces the Western middle class to seek out appropriate media programs by setting up international media networks. The American impulse for proselytizing, however, must be mentioned. Missionary work can appear even in the guise of secular cultural events; perhaps CNN and Fox News should be understood as such. Western media seem to suggest a kind of global culture that is not an entity with an existence of its own, but is a conglomerate of multiple international cultural events that reflect a multitude of societies whose cultural differences are minimized, although distinctive enough to be perceived as exotic. Hence, it is no wonder that after the sterilization by the Western media all of these cultures appear extraordinarily comprehensible to the Western viewer. There is even an effort on the 49

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part of Western cultural elites to prove that intensive Western media entrepreneurship of international events eventually leads to a coherent and controlled global order. The reality is far from this. Such efforts cannot have an impact on the formation of a world culture, and not only because the efforts are Western-derived. Neither the diffusion of international programs, nor the contrivance of international media events, can even marginally contribute to the creation of a supraculture. If the assumption is that the exposure of millions of viewers to the same programs, whether Western or not, makes a substantial contribution to a world culture, then the assumption is fallacious. Because active exposure, even if prolonged, cannot change fundamental sociopolitical conditions that stand in stark contradiction to the artificial coherence and putative cultural convergence promoted by these media. The argument resembles the false sense of community created by American and English television in their popular sitcom shows, whereas the disintegration of communities, especially in North America, is a well-known fact. Media are conservative, preserving conventions and the social status quo as loyal custodians. Reconsidering arguments put forward in the late 1950s about the culture industry, of which the media are central components, Adorno (1944/1990) came to the same conclusions in the 1960s as he did a decade earlier: “The concepts of order which it [the culture industry] hammers into human beings are always those of the status quo” (280). Furthermore, Adorno continues the argument, observing that the culture industry proclaims: You shall conform, without instruction as to what; conform to that which exists anyway, and to that which everyone thinks anyway as a reflex of its power and omnipresence. The power of the culture industry’s ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness. (280)

The ideas that a major mission of contemporary media is to expose people to other cultures, and that the more such exposure takes place the more likely that the generation is one of a supraculture, are unfounded. Only through interactions over common problems that require building suprainstitutions is there going to emerge a new attitude toward “others,” a different perception of reality, a new type of consciousness, a synthetic new language, and a radical mythology that will converge to form a supranational culture. The media facilitate neither unbiased encounters between cultures nor critical 50

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debate about such encounters, but rather provide mediated and biased exposure that contributes to the generation of stereotypes and vulgar simplifications. In contrast to fiction, in which the text is not expected to represent an objective reality but signifies an imagined one, the texts of news stories and media events are perceived by the popular mind to accurately represent and rigorously communicate an external reality. The falsity of such a perception is obvious, yet stubbornly persists among the masses of media consumers. The statements that “it has been written in the paper” or that “we know because the TV broadcast it” are still powerful. At the root of the problem is the popular assumption that there is an objective reality, and that the media can capture that reality in terms that everybody understands. Paradoxically, that reality does not include the media itself, and therefore the texts of the media are all denotative. The transformation of the “social materials” by the media, especially in news reporting, documentaries, and all the so-called factual programs, into cultural significations takes place out of sight and undeclared, in a process opposite to that of fiction. Thus, the fictionalizing of the social carried out by the media is unnoticed by the ordinary viewer and consequently is not perceived as occurring. In the case of literary fiction, the imaginative use of social materials is taken for granted as part of the creative process, whereas in the case of media texts, the use is obfuscated. In other words, the media draw material from everyday social activities and subject it to a process of alterations that is compelled to accommodate both the limitations of the media as well as commercial and ideological expectations. The selection of items to be covered is directed by editors and producers, respectively. That is, following the selective perception of reporters and cameramen on the site of an event, the final editing process is carried out in such a manner as to fit the expectations of the general public’s discourse as well as those of specific and immediate representatives of diverse interests such as advertisers, politicians, lobbying groups, and powerful social movements. All these efforts transform the original content into an end product that, in most cases, bears little or no resemblance to the social material being reported on and its context. This is precisely the imperceptible process of transforming raw social events into a cultural genre. In other words, the vitality of life occurrences is transformed into codes and expressive objects: a commentary on social 51

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events, not objective or true reflections of them. Because media work involves individuals, their actions, their imagination, their thoughts, and their emotions, the cultural commentary takes the shape, most often, of a narrative. Barthes (1974) observed with insight that “the classic author is like an artisan bent over the workbench of meaning and selecting the best expression for the concept he has already formed” (173). Most of the time, this process is subtle, unnoticeable, and pulsates under the glossy surface of routine daily work of media corporations. At different times, the process is consciously organized to produce a contrived, cultural commentary on various social aspects by creating seemingly reality-based narratives. The description of the personal experience of a story analyst at American Detective, a prime-time “reality-based” cop show on ABC, is illustrative. Debra Seagal (1993) describes how live material is tampered with to fit the formula, with the effect that this popular show got high ratings and, in turn, brought in rich advertisers: There are six of us in the story meetings, the producer, four loggers, and the story-department manager. Each logger plays highlight reels and pitches stories, most of which are rejected by the producer for being “not hot enough,” not “sexy.”…We are to hope for a naturally dramatic climax. But if it does not happen, I understand, we’ll work one out. (51)

Seagal goes on to relate how the story analysts are responsible for compiling stock-footage books …containing every conceivable example of guns, drugs, money, scenics, street signs. This compendium is used to embellish stories when certain images or sounds have not been picked up by a main or secondary camera. Evidently the “reality” of a given episode is subject to enhancement. (52)

Further on, the author describes how the finished episode emerges: Once our supervising producer has picked the cases that might work for the show, the “stories” are turned over to an editor. Within a few weeks the finished videos emerge from the editing room with “problems” fixed, chronologies reshuffled, and, when, necessary, images and Sound bites clipped and replaced by old filler footage from unrelated cases. (52) 52

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Hence, what contributes to the uncritical surrender to the media is the sense that the textual production communicates in such a manner that no valid distinction is perceived between the social, with its ideological biases, and the cultural, with its encoded narratives. It is, thus, the appearance that whatever takes place in the media is only social and that the “objective reality” is what is reported. Yet, in the final analysis, as far as objectivity is concerned, there is no difference between a piece of fiction and a news story. Western media stories reporting on other cultures or on international events, rather than being objective voices that reflect an emerging global culture, as they claim to be, are instead popular narrative adventures, a new picaresque genre for Western middle-class consumption. The transformation of international social events into live picaresque genres is often carried out by the volition of the individual participants themselves, who metamorphose themselves into narrative characters once the TV camera is present. Jo Anne Isaak’s (1993) observation of the 1991 Communist putsch against Gorbachev’s regime and the resistance put up around the barricaded Moscow White House, under the leadership of Yeltsin, is cogent: The replays of the ‘barricade tales,” as they are now referred to, range in genre from fairy tales to horror movies, or B-grade westerns. In each case there is some overwhelmingly powerful evil that the protagonist, by virtue of having Right on his side, is able to overcome. (39)

Isaak brings up also the comments of the art critic Konstantin Akinsha based on his own personal experiences of the events: From the first day we watched this revolution on TV, CNN played a key role here. Each person had the possibility of playing a role. We played with all possible stereotypes from Prague in 1968 to Hemingway’s Madrid to Santiago. People draw on the stereotypes they received from countless movies. … CNN and all international networks capitalise on this … (39)

Existing technology allows both written and electronic media to instantaneously insert international material within their local narratives. The international material enriches the existing local repertoire and even opens up the possibilities for new genres. But again, if there were not a substantial demand for cross-cultural and international programs, Western media, especially American media, would not persist 53

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in producing or buying them. Also, one may remark, paraphrasing Marx, that fantasy precedes an approaching reality. “Global village” is a metaphor for relatively worldwide technological accessibility to media and not for genuine reciprocal familiarity with the intricacy of each others’ cultures, let alone the formation of a supraculture. It is not too difficult to observe that the international media narrative is necessitated by the Western and non-Western middle class in order to make sense of a bewildering world or to reinforce attitudes and lifestyles with the help of familiar categories, simplifying the world’s complexity and stripping it of nuances and idiosyncrasies. The latest crisis in Thailand in June 2009 is a good example. When I changed from one TV cable station to another, I got the feeling of a small world, a global village, all preoccupied by the same events, with the same heroes. Although all of them reported the same thing, and even the shots were taken from the same spots, I still was not clear what triggered the crisis in Thailand. Gradually, I proceeded to piece together a colorful foreign narrative with the help of relevant categories, borrowed from Western broadcasts during the recent political crisis. Although this story was seemingly logical, it was not only partially false, but also recontextualized, as if it took place in a different Thailand. That is, I made up a story more likely in resemblance to what I thought happens in Thailand than to what really happened. Geertz’s (1973) definition of culture is certainly pertinent here: an ensemble of stories we tell ourselves about ourselves 448). The argument that one of the current signs of global culture is the uniformization of cultural codes in various societies can also be disputed. Cultural codes emerge independently in various places, as well as being borrowed, copied, adopted, and appropriated from other social contexts. However, they are recharged by the borrowing culture with new and different connotation. Even imitation of external codes of demeanor and employment of similar linguistic codes do not mean that these codes and behaviors carry similar meanings that can interchange with and override their individual social contexts. Although a social context cannot be replicated, cultural codes can be transplanted, but this is an illusory sense of universality. The following illustration makes the point: In the summer of 1990, the CBC local station in Winnipeg, Canada, broadcast in its Evening News a story about local Indians protesting in front of the legislative building, in which they put up tents to repudiate what they believed to be a lack of progress in their affairs with the provincial government. 54

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At the same time, in a different and far away country, the newly free national television station of Romania broadcast a story about a sit-in demonstration taking place for a few weeks by students against the new government and their neo-Communist supporters. The students had put up tents in University Square in Bucharest and raised their voices for the first time against the lack of radical reforms by the government. During the same summer, Israeli public television aired a story about the Nurses’ Union, which, after finding demands for better working conditions falling on deaf ears, decided to demonstrate in front of the Knesset, the Parliament, by putting up tents and asking for support from the members of Parliament. The example is illustrative because the three groups, operating in different countries, employed what appears to be the same cultural code to convey discontent with political authorities. Yet, the use of tents operated very differently as a metaphor in each situation. For the Indians of Manitoba, putting up tents sent the message that they were the first on that land and were living in tents there long before the building of the provincial legislature. Using tents as part of their protest emphasized the historical difference in the relative claims on the land. For the students in Bucharest, putting up tents in their selfdeclared “Communism-free zone” was intended to make the point that even after Ceaucescu’s regime fell, the Communists were still in the government buildings, whereas the people who made the revolution were still in tents in University Square. For the Israeli nurses, putting up tents was intended to make the point that although members of Parliament can afford to live in houses, the nurses can only afford tents. I assume that the same perspective can be applied to any television format (Fiske 1989). One would ask whether, for example, someone in Ethiopia or India is as fascinated by the theme of dieting in American sitcoms, as the American audience would be. Will this urban middleclass concern of Americans make any sense to people who are starving? At a certain basic level the episode surely can make some sense, but in a very different way than it is understood by a middle-class family in the United States. An interesting pattern is copying a genre that has proven itself successful elsewhere while contextualizing its content and background. This has been the case with the Brazilian soap opera lsaura and the French serial Chateauvallon, which were explicitly patterned after the American Dallas (Mattelart and Mattelart 1992). The alleged success 55

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of Dallas outside of the United States can be attributed not only to widespread fascination with American popular culture, but also to its universal formula that permitted, first and foremost, local projections and a reading that accessed the concerns of localities. The polysemic reading of the same media text as well as the recontextualization of it are strong hermeneutical parameters that raise insurmountable obstacles in the transference of media texts from one culture to another, let alone the formation of a universal culture. Media, in general, and the Western media in particular, are not capable of reforming society, let alone reforming the globe. The perpetual motion of the media, fed by the inexhaustible need for information, establishes a false sense of progress toward global homogeneity. The locus of social change—that is, the place in which signs of change toward a world culture could be observed, if such changes exist—is the social structure of our individual societies as the most fundamental referential system and the collective consciousness of its representation. Mass Media and Global Orientation in East-Central Europe: A Lesson from the Past The second part of this chapter discusses, although briefly, a few changes in the social structure of East-Central Europe vis-á-vis the tasks of the local media. The discussion highlights the case study of East-Central Europe as it unfolded itself following a long period of isolation, during the first years after the 1989 revolutions, that is, the very first stages of the transition to a democratic-parliamentary system. The assumption is that East-Central Europe with its openness for radical changes toward democracy as well as its will toward an integration into a larger political and cultural region, that is the European Union, could be paradigmatic. Meaning that the case of East-Central Europe may teach in retrospective something about the conditions forming a positive orientation for an integration into larger global units. Although most of the references of this section refer to the Romanian context, I believe that many of the generalizations in this chapter are valid for the rest of the East-Central European countries. East-Central Europe—that is, the former Communist European bloc (Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, East Germany, and Albania)—was suddenly catapulted after the 1989 revolutions from xenophobic nationalistic Communism into a condition of anomie characterizing the transition from relatively 56

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closed and paranoid societies to democratic political systems that are open and cooperative. This transitory period was full of anguish, confusion, tension, and instability and was experimental in many ways and at all levels, from the individual to the enterprise to the level of government itself. The anomic condition in which individuals went about their daily affairs was characterized by an acute crisis of normative guidance that also motivated people to search for new rules, new methods, and new norms of behavior to replace the old collapsing structures and paradigms. It was a state of frenzied search for a new “sacred space” (Cornea 1990). A state dominated by this condition may be called an anomic state. In such difficult times, it was only natural for many East-Central Europeans to believe that, in opposition to the internal “disorder” in their country, there was an “outside order”; that is, there was a definite special ideal order in Western Europe and North America about which most had only a vague idea, but with which they could identify. Furthermore, coming out of long years of political exclusion, many East-Central Europeans felt handicapped, left behind by history and world development. They truly believed that all over the Western world, even in many of the non-Western countries, people were living better than they had lived, accumulated advanced knowledge, enjoyed more of the benefits of wealth, traveled, and had been exposed to rich cross-cultural experiences. In short, coming out of isolation, the sense among East Europeans was that for many years they had been “disconnected” from the West and therefore, as they saw it, from the global center. The sense of disconnection, exacerbated by the frustration of radical changes, chaotic reforms, and the general disorganization of the domestic scene heightened the orientation of people toward foreign information about world affairs. That is, most Eastern Europeans, especially the educated classes, felt that knowledge and information about what was going on in the West and in the world had become crucial to their own existence; as a result, they became more attuned to international matters. Hence, the local media was expected to be a central source of information about world affairs. However, the national, state-controlled TV and radio monitored much of the flow of information and its interpretation (Radojkovic 1992). In this anomic state it was natural to turn to the media to find answers, especially when there was an unusual drive among many for being alert to 57

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the “new” as an almost eschatological source amid the surrounding bewilderment. Discussing the role of the culture industry, especially the media, just after World War II, Adorno (1944/1990) succinctly observed: “In a supposedly chaotic world it provides human beings with something like standards for orientation and that alone seems worthy of approval” (279). Yet, without an established democratic media culture, the local media manipulated the anomic crisis toward a partisan political position, ignoring its role in shaping tolerant and democratic political culture through the education of public opinion (Totok 1992). It is also true that in such times, in which there were unprecedented opportunities to put forward sociopolitical positions, there were very few journalists and newspapers in East-Central Europe that were not tempted to encourage, even to the point of incitement and making use of vulgar propaganda, the adoption of their political views (Tudoran 1992). Under pressures of economic hardship, changes in norms and morals, as well as the confusion of a multitude of emotional political positions, many East-Central Europeans, especially the intelligentsia, looked to Western sociopolitical systems for a sustaining governing model. Inflated fragments of such a “Western vision” were eagerly promoted by local media and by the foreign radio and television stations that broadcasted to the region. The desire by many for a vital, modern, and stable system formed a tacit coalition between consumers (readers and viewers) and journalists in creating a seemingly coherent Western vision. In other words, most of the time the West was presented as a beautiful story with enlightened leaders, strong parliamentarians, masses aware of civic needs and responsibilities, critical intellectuals, moral policemen, equally distributed wealth, welfare, and ethical work standards. In contrast, the villains were, of course, the Communists, local politicians, the Russians, minorities, and, only recently, the self-made rich. In such periods of upheaval and anomie, characterized by a lack of guiding norms and moral standards, there was also an insecure sense of objective reality. Under such circumstances, boundaries between unfamiliar and unprecedented social events and action, on the one hand, and narrative, on the other, became blurred. Certainly, when social events were reported by the news media machine, or worked out into other media narratives, the transformation of the social into the cultural, as in all media practices, not only passed uncritically (as in many places in the West), but also received a welcomed “collaboration” 58

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from the media public. The glorification of the West, especially the United States, was thus a favored leitmotif in the collective writing of the fairytale. Paraphrasing Emile Durkheim, who insisted that people do not think, but participate in collective thinking, one could similarly argue that people’s writings on their favored narratives could be considered a collective enterprise. However, there was more in the apparently rosy picture presented by local East-Central European media. If, during the Communist regime, most East-Central Europeans were strongly biased toward anything that originated in the West as a hidden form of protest against the regime and its propaganda (Bar-Haim 1989), the “Western vision” and the global orientation were promoted by liberal circles in order to counteract the nationalist camps. A global orientation could be subversive and therefore feared by nationalists. Yet, in spite of the fascination with the sprawling media in their countries and with the new form of power that they exercised, a power very different from the crude propaganda of the Communist regime, the mythology of the media in the eyes of the public was weaker than in the West. The reason that East-Central European media was perceived by the public as less charismatic and more vulnerable than the Western media is because of their direct involvement with politics. Manipulation of the media by the previous regime had been a perennial topic of debate in all the former Communist countries. Furthermore, the debate even extended to former television officials, some, still today, in key positions and to the question of how trustworthy various newspapers and even the national television were either officially or unofficially associated with the government or with the various political parties of the opposition (Daskalov 1992). Because the politicization of media, especially the daily newspapers and weekly magazines, was considered an indisputable reality, and because the turnover of many of the editors and prominent journalists was high, the public’s sense of the credibility of most media as independent civic entities was problematic (Fuga 1992). This is one of the reasons why Western stations and foreign press had more credibility, let alone the enigmatic spell cast by whatever originated from the United States. Thus, one could not overlook local consumption demands from the public for Western programs and ways in which local policymakers, in tight cooperation with the major Western international networks, supplied relatively cheap programs such as old American movies and documentaries as well as news and current affairs. The international 59

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networks available in East-Central Europe included BBC, Radio France International, Voice of America, and CNN. It was evident that in the mass culture void left by Communist propaganda, there was nothing else that could supply the mass media machine as well as public curiosity and excitement better than Western, especially American, programs. As far as the local press was concerned, again the divisions were based on sharp political identities, with almost no exceptions (Lefter 1991). If such press as Romania Mare, Natiunea, and Europa, for example, right-wing ultra-nationalistic newspapers in Romania— had rarely dedicated their pages to news or commentaries from the West or elsewhere, such publications as Revista 22, Romania Libera, Dilema, and Cotidianu—representing the liberal press—gave ample space and prominence to news from the West and elsewhere, as well as to interviews with Western intellectuals and political personalities. If the journalistic discourse of the nationalistic papers throughout East-Central Europe dwelled nostalgically on glorious historical events made extensive use of old rustic, folkloristic, and Christian religious symbolism, and employed traditional imagery such as family, motherhood virginity fatherland and other emotional metaphors to draw nationalistic patriotic images, the journalistic discourse of the liberal papers was altogether different. The latter highlighted international events including interviews with foreign personalities and investigative stories, which uncovered corruption and stressed political–legal commentaries and economic debates. The language was that of educated laymen, whose vocabulary represented a rational attitude toward politics and international affairs as well as openness to other cultures. The liberal press, reflecting the interests of educated nonnationalistic groups, displayed a readiness to explore options that assumed integration into larger geoeconomic and geopolitical communities such as the European Union, Southeast Europe, the Danube Basin countries, and so on. Up to the end of World War II there were relatively small intellectual groups in each of the East-Central European countries, and many of these intellectuals were nationalists with right-wing inclinations. This situation was particularly characteristic of the most outstanding intellectuals of Romania. The professional–technical class educated in the universities was very small. The majority of the population was comprised of peasants, small-scale factory workers, and craftsmen, most of them with no more than an elementary education. The social structure of the former Communist countries at the time of the 60

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revolutions in 1989 was altogether different. There was a large group of young, humanist, critical intellectuals, whose formative period was during the long years of passive political dissidence. This group in total contrast to its prewar predecessors, was mostly liberal–democratic in its political orientation and strongly sympathetic with Western political philosophy. However, the most novel and important factor, at the time of the collapse of the regimes, was a sizeable class of professionals, especially the technically educated. This group had all the potential to develop into a middle class with an urban contemporary style of life and a strong disposition toward work mobility, consumerism, and leisure activities. This class of technical professionals, trained in the scientific technocratic mold, was still to some extent different in its makeup from its Western counterparts. Resembling in its embryonic features the Western middle class, this new East-Central European stratum displayed some international orientation. This prospectively influential stratum had become similar to its Western counterparts, in surpassing national boundaries as part of redefining its own professional and social prospects. The liberal media tried to rally these two groups, who formed the bulk of a liberal and civically aware public, and to strengthen their sociopolitical disposition. In a sense, the liberal press had become their public voice. However, it seems that the main challenge of the political–liberal media throughout East-Central Europe was presented by their capacity to form public opinion among the working class and those who were either first-generation urban or arrived in the cities during the last decades. This is a large population, with only a basic, or at most a vocational education. They were insecure about finding permanent employment and still shared a semi-rural style of life as well as religious inclinations and nationalist attitudes. Political events have shown that this was a volatile and manipulable group that could easily fall prey to the nationalist demagoguery of charismatic leaders. A case in point was the political manipulation of miners in Romania and its devastating repercussions throughout Romanian political culture. Hence, the task of the liberal press to educate this stratum toward a tolerant, civil political culture and toward a wider perspective on local affairs was considerable. It seems that many of the changes that were required and dreamed of in East-Central Europe depended to a large extent on broadening the narrow world of this stratum. It is doubtful whether even the concentrated effort of the democratic, liberal media 61

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could form a nonnationalistic public opinion in a short period of time (Havel 1993). However, the task remained to address the public with a discourse that would be widely accessible. The liberal media acted only to persuade the persuaded, as if all held similar beliefs. It was perhaps easy for liberal intellectuals and journalists to live in an incestuous environment of ideas and creeds and to assume a moral global brotherhood, however fictionalized that world may be. The situation may have historically resembled the time during the Weimar Republic when intellectuals and artists throve in a few major cities, in which they exchanged ideas and opinions about world affairs, wrote, argued among themselves, and eventually created around themselves a civilized, tolerant milieu. However, only a few years later they realized that they had no idea about the masses, who were left to the brainwashing of the national socialism of Hitler and Goebbels. Smith (1990) cogently argues: It is one thing to be able to package imagery and diffuse it through world-wide telecommunications networks. It is quite another to ensure that such images retain their power to move and inspire populations, who have for so long been divided by particular histories and cultures which have mirrored and crystallized the experiences of historically separated social groups, whether classes or regions, religious congregations or ethnic communities. (179)

East-Central European societies had a unique historical opportunity to change old institutions, experiment with new civic structures, and explore new models and ideas. International conditions were favorable: the unification of Western Europe, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the displacement of many regional conflicts from Latin America and the Far East. Extreme nationalism seemed to be in retreat in many parts of the world, and the state’s authority was undergoing a persistent process of delegitimation, whereas newly constituted international structures and transnational activities (trade, world events, tourism, scientific cooperation, and, of course, mass communication) had become increasingly prevalent. Furthermore, internal conditions of Western postmodern societies enabled an unprecedented transcultural interplay of ideas and symbolism regarding the nature of civic society that had become a definite advantage in the formation of a metaculture. However, there were more than favorable external circumstances for a global orientation in East-Central Europe. Both the anomic 62

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trends, with their profound effects on the transformation of traditional structure to new capitalist social structures as well as the corollary impulse to question traditional theodicies, had contributed to dissolving old prejudices and rendering ingrained stereotypical categories obsolete. Young people found that local structures and their rationales, as well as the available range of interpretations and symbolism, were so anachronistic and narrowly defined that only unprecedented changes toward an openness in all aspects of life could have generated an emancipatory social environment compatible with their contemporary experience. Such a society had ceased to be subjected to old divisions and demarcations, nor was its collective consciousness subordinated any longer to one singular hegemonic discourse. The individual integrated in a multitude of civil communities would reign supreme as the essence of a newly relevant, non-Utopian universality, whereas the immediate surroundings that remained a forceful and yet comforting space would be an extension of a new relationship. A sublime civil space as always should have, but never yet has been, achieved. Twenty years after the falling of the Communist regimes of EastCentral Europe, one may generally conclude that these countries had a relatively successful transition to a democratic parliamentary system, albeit, marginal nationalistic outbursts, as well as a successful incorporation into the much-coveted European Union, with all the implications of this. The long process of democratization of institutions and of the Europeanization of their collective consciousness brought about an unprecedented receptivity to cultural diversity as well as demonstrated an adaptability to worldwide cultural demands. In the perspective of twenty years, it had become evident that few major characteristics of these societies, though this is a generalization, had a positive impact on the formation of a cultural openness, or to put it differently, an influence on the widening of a cultural solidarity, further than any time in their history. The characteristics included the existence of a professional stratum capable of being transformed into a middle class; an active group of intellectuals whose attitudes were favorable to a liberal and pro-Western orientation and last the emergence of a secular eschatology that represented the connection with a meta European center which supported such principles as democracy, civility, and globality. As far as mass media is concerned, one may generally conclude that it had become over the years less nationalistic and less traditionalistic. Those newspapers and radio stations of the extreme 63

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right which harbored nationalistic positions, addressed themselves to an increasing marginalized public. All this was in a stark contrast to the rising popularity of liberal, European-oriented mass media. A central assumption of this discussion is that there is a fundamental affinity between the character of a large middle class and cultural openness as well as between the Western democracy and receptivity to global aspirations. In summary, the question still remains open to debate, whether the Western system and its civility can be extended to a large scale and emerge as a global worldview. References Adorno, T. W. 1990. Cultural industry reconsidered. In Culture and society: Contemporary debates, ed. J. C. Alexander and S. Seidman, 275–83. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Allen, R. C. 2001. On reading soaps: A semiotic primer. In Popular culture: Production and consumption, ed. C. L. Harrington and D. D. Bielby, 232–42. Oxford: Blackwell. Aron, R. 1970. Main currents in sociological thought. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday Anchor Books. Bakhtin, M. 1984. Rabelais and his world. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Barbu, Z. 1976 quoted in Bigsby, C. W. E. Approaches to popular culture. London: Edward Arnold. Bar-Haim, G. 1990. Popular culture and ideological discontents: A theory. Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 3 (Spring): 279–97. Barthes, R. 1994. S/Z an essay. New York, NY: Hill and Wang/The Noonday Press. Baudrillard, Jean. 1983. Simulations. New York City: Semiotext. Bauman, Z. 1992. Intimations of postmodernity. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Bell, D. 1978. The cultural contradictions of capitalism. New York: Basic Books. Benjamin, W. 1969. Illuminations. New York: Schoken. Berman, M. 1983. All that is solid melts into air. New York, NY: Verso. Bigsby, C. W. E., ed. 1976. Approaches to popular culture. London: Edward Arnold. Boorstin, D. J. 1962. The image. London: Hammondsworth Penguin. Bourdieu, P. 1979. Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Caillois, R. 1979. Men, play and games. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe. Campbell, F. I. 2000. The spell of the sensuous: Casino atmosphere and the gambler – an expansion. In Phenomenological approaches to popular culture, ed. M. T. Carroll and E. Tafoya. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press. Cawelty, J. 1976. Adventure, mystery and romance: Formula stories as art and popular culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 64

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Chambers, J. 1986. Popular culture: The metropolitan experience. London: Methuen. Clarke, J., and C. Critcher 1985. The devil makes work: Leisure in capitalist Britain. London: Macmillan. Collins, R. 1982. Sociological insight. New York: Oxford University Press. Cornea, D. 1990. Spatiu sacru [The sacred space]. Revista 22 26, no. 13: 15. Dayan, D., and E. Katz. 1994. Media events, the live broadcasting of history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Durkheim, E. 1961. The elementary forms of religious life. London: Allen and Unwin. Elias, Norbert. 1978. The civilizing process. Vol. 1. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. _____. 1982. The civilizing process. Vol. 2. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Featherstone, M. 1992. The heroic life and everyday life. In Cultural theory and cultural change, ed. M. Featherstone, 159–82. London: Sage. Fiske, J. 1989. Understanding popular culture. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman. Frey, J. H. 1984. “Gambling: A sociological review. The Annals, AAPSS 474: 107–21. Geertz, C. 1973. The interpretation of cultures. New York, NY: Basic Books. Geraghty, C. 1998. Soap opera and Utopia. In Cultural theory and popular culture, A Reader, ed. J. Storey, 216–23. Athens: The University of Georgia Press. Handelman, D. 1977. Play and ritual: Complementary frame of metacommunication. In It’s a funny thing humor, ed. A. J. Chapman, 185–92. International conference of humor and laughter. Cardiff, Wales, 1976. Oxford: Pergamon Press. _____. 1999. The playful seductions of neo-shamanic ritual – review article. History of Religions 39: 65–72. Hannerz, Ulf. 1990. Cosmopolitans and locals in world culture. Theory, Culture and Society 7, no. 2–3, June: 237–53. Havel, V. 1993. Summer meditations. Trans. P. Wilson. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Hebdige, D. 1979. Subculture, the meaning of style. New York, NY: Methuen. Hilbert, R. A. 1986. Anomie and the moral regulation of reality: The Durkheiman tradition in modern relief. Sociological Theory 4, no. 1, Spring: 1–20. Howes, D. 1991. The varieties of sensory experience, a sourcebook in the anthropology of the senses. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Isaak, J. A. 1993. What’s to be done? Borderline 29. Kael, P. 1980. When the lights go down. London: Holt, Rinehart and Wilson. Katz, R. 1991. History and popular music. Paper presented at the annual association of the History Association. Jerusalem, June. Lefter, J. B. 1991. Democratizores mediilor [The democratization of media]. Agora 3. Legrain, Phillipe. 2003. Cultural globalization is not Americanization. The Chronicle Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 9. Martin, B. 1983. A sociology of contemporary cultural change. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Menon, S. 1987. The carnival is over. Borderlines: Cultures, Contexts, Cannadas (Toronto), Fall/Winter, 39. Newcomb, H. T.V. The most popular art. New York, NY: Anchor Books. 65

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Newman, O. 1968. The sociology of the betting shop. British Journal of Sociology 19 (March): 17–33. Paz, O. 1981. The labyrinth of solitude: Life and thought in Mexico. New York: Grove Press. Radojkovic, M. 1992. Prehistoric stage of media in the Post-Communist countries. Paper presented at the symposium on mass media in the transformation of East Central European Society, Bucharest Romania, June. Robertson, Roland. 1992. Globalization: Social theory and global culture. London Sage. Seagal, D. 1993. Tales from the cutting-romm floor. The “Reality” of reality-based television. Harper’s Magazine, November, 50–57. Simmel, G. 1971. Fashion. In On individuality and social forms, selected writings, ed. D. N. Levine, 294–324. Chicago, IL: The Chicago University Press. Simpson, C. 1984. Popular culture as civil religion: The collective imagination and the social integration of mass society. State, Culture and Society 1, no. 1 (Fall): 157–75. Smith, Anthony, D. 1990. Towards a global culture? Theory, Culture and Society 7, no. 2–3, June: 171–93. Strinati, D. 1995. An introduction to theories of popular culture. New York: Routledge. Tenbruck, Friedrich, H. 1990. The dream of a secular ecumene: The meaning and limits of policies development. Theory, Culture and Society 7, no. 2–3, June: 193–207. Veblen, T. 1981. The theory of the leisure class. New York: Penguin Books. Weber, M. 1971. Politics as a vocation. In From Max Weber: Essays in sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth, and C. Wright Mills, 77–128. New York: Oxford University Press. Weber, M. 1978. Economy and society, an outline of interpretive sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Part II The Crises of Rituals and Rituals in Times of Crises

4 Anomie and the Crisis of the Ritual: The Rise of the Network Culture As Durkheim so brilliantly demonstrated, it is the group that generate sacred symbols amid transcendental sentiments. The very fact that modern Western groups have increasingly failed to produce religious feelings was central to Durkheim’s work. Since his book The Division of Labor in Society was first published in 1893, some of his analyses have become crystallized and have even surpassed his predictions, whereas others have not materialized. The present crisis of the ritual in late-modern society (a term chosen to distinguish between Durkheim’s time and our own contemporary one) is the result of the intensification of an ongoing problematic relationship between the individual and the group that impedes in giving rise to sacred symbols, a trend that Durkheim foresaw. The growing difficulty faced by Western welfare states in coping on the one hand with the multitude of unprecedented demands placed on them, and on the other hand with the disintegration of geographical communities no longer capable of providing social cohesion and support, has led many to believe that a “civil society” seems to be transpiring from the current impasse. A civil society as a social organization displaying no hegemonic ideological virtues, but able to restore a qualitative relationship between individuals and structures and consequently to recover the ritual may be a solution (Alexander 2006). How, nonetheless, can this type of nonhegemonic society be capable of persisting without forcing a common consciousness, or posing a common vision? And furthermore, how are these possible without the support of certain forms of sacredness? 69

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Anomie: As a Permanent Condition Any future model of social organization, be it a civil society or something else, that attempts to redefine an individual–group relationship, and thus to determine the nature of the sacred, will have to confront the central problem of anomie. It is this acute state of intrinsic and permanent anomie that primarily characterizes the present individual–group relationship. Merton’s (1968) interpretation of Durkheim’s term as the process “whereby people prefer technically efficient over morally prescribed means” (189) provided only a limited understanding of the meaning of anomie without examining the significance, thus reducing the concept to a mere lack of normative guidance. By the mid-1980s, new theoretical research on Durkheim’s usage and understanding of anomie was suggesting novel and wider ramifications. These interpretations centered around the idea that Durkheim basically regarded anomie as a state of social withdrawal, not only as a consequence of a structural imbalance, but also as a disposition of an individualistic consciousness, a subjectively inclined frame of mind. Typically, Hilbert (1986) observed that, “Anomie is the absence of our objective experience of reality” (19). Hilbert concluded that Durkheim perceived anomie as an excess of individuality. The objective experience of reality is not the result of a mere cognitive order, but is fundamentally a moral one. Mestrovic (1985) thus correctly concluded that Durkheim used the concept of anomie as the secular counterpart of sin, “which is to say, as an incorrect arrangement of individual and collective representations as the treatment of the sacred as if it were profane and vice versa” (124). He went on to specify that “if the gulf between the sacred and the profane is an unbridgeable abyss, anomie is any tendency to mingle the two opposites, even reverse their relationship” (133). Durkheim’s conception that it is the individual who represents the profane, whereas society represents the sacred, has become blurred in late-modern society. Contemporary groups are increasingly amorphous in their compositions having a temporary and uncommitted existence and being too weak to provide solace and reassurance. Only rarely do groups display a sui generis reality forceful enough to mobilize and impose persistent patterns of behavior. In short, groups no longer leave their imprint on individual consciousness. The once intersubjective reality of the group has given way to interindividuality 70

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of the functional network; that is, the individual has become a selfcontained unit, gravitating in a space filled with ever-changing networks that the individual initiates or to which he attaches himself for certain periods of time and for specific utilitarian or affinity-oriented purposes. Only occasionally are permanent social contacts established within a network, and even these bind only selected individuals. The network—a better term to characterize the increasing late-modern social organization—is the creation of the individual, providing personal services, including emotional ones, and facilitating contacts with other individuals and with adjacent networks. Traditional groups have centers and sacred collective representations, whereas networks established to fulfill individual goals are incapable of representing anything but individual aspirations and desires; thus, having no sacred collective representations, networks are little preoccupied by ritualizations. Networks are made up of autonomous subjects drawn into certain temporary contacts or fragmentary relationships, and centered around one specific individual. It is no wonder that popular internet networks, such as Facebook and Twitter are based on the paradigm of what we term here individual’s network. Having little or no historical memory, common mythology and opportunities for self-reflexivity, networks seem to possess no collective consciousness and therefore no need for common mechanisms to maintain social solidarity and to revitalize the society’s sacred representations and symbols. The result is a kind of blurred distinction between individual and group-network representations; that is, a hybrid representation of both individual and network that reflects the individualization of social relationships, a state that weakens both the sacred and transcendental processes. Lefebvre (1968) commented on “the profane displacing but not replacing the sacred” (59), as he characterized the nature of everyday life, neatly encapsulating the situation. Yet, as we shall observe the argument is only partial. Durkheim (1893/1964) focused on the main issue, yet as we shall see it, the argument is only partial, when he asserted that “it is first affirmed that the sphere of the social grows smaller and smaller to the great advantage of the individual” (204). Observing that Durkheim’s concept of anomie was fundamentally connected to an excess of individuality, Mestrovic (1985) argued that “anomie requires a veneration of the individual to such an extent that it is believed that the individual is capable of choosing a state of moral transgression” (129). To go 71

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one step further, it is reasonable to assume that anomie exists when society is predominantly perceived as vulnerable and too “transparent” and individuals are all too aware of this, when the myths of society are cynically regarded by individuals whose insecurity prevents their comprehending a total social entity beyond their own limited personal experience. Furthermore, in such a state, whatever falls beyond the individual’s experience is doubted, challenged, and debated, not only because society is vulnerable and therefore little is taken for granted, but also because concomitant with the loss of one type of sociality an intense search occurs for a new one. Lefebvre’s (1968) observation concerning contemporary society is highly relevant in this case: “Thus we have a society that is obsessed with dialog, communication, participation, integration and coherence, all the things it lacks, all the things it misses” (185). The notion of acute awareness of society’s vulnerability was also discerned by Bauman (1992), for whom this alarming sign was followed by the advent of modernity: The kind of Society that, retrospectively, came to be called modern, emerged out of the discovery that human order is vulnerable, contingent and devoid of reliable foundations. The discovery was shocking. The response to the shock was a dream and an effort to make order solid, obligatory and reliably founded. It prompted an incessant drive to eliminate the haphazard. (xi)

The discovery that human order is vulnerable preceded both modernity and late modernity. The only distinction is that the response of modernity was a certain kind of sociality that feverishly experimented, especially with rationality, whereas the response of late modernity is a kind of sustainable disorder, living in one’s own ruins, making anomie not a warning sign, but a permanent condition; even trying to exploit it, as Martin (1983) observed: “embracing anomie for the sake of the expounded creative possibilities it can offer” (51). The perception of a vulnerable social order, either as a warning sign for an imminent new order, as Bauman claims, or as a newly permanent condition (Bar-Haim 1996) underlies the structure of contemporary culture, which perceives the sacred either as “too far away” and therefore irrelevant unless it can be reduced to as many familiar tokens and identifiable icons as possible, or as a man-made myth, lacking in mystery and for just this reason highly nostalgic as well as rife with various genres of incredulity. 72

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Rituals as Desacralized Occasions It is on these grounds that the spectacles thrive. The grand spectacle has become the epitome of contemporary celebration. With its large-scale technical wizardry and stunning effects, logistical complexity, and vast publicity, it attempts to compensate for the loss of mythology and the absence of a metaphysical presence. Spectacles, especially—although not only—the large ones, are planned as events intended to impress and entertain; they are desacralized occasions that bring together individuals who are generally unacquainted and seldom encounter one another after the spectacle or perhaps only on a few other rare occasions. These are events of passive consumption, with a self-imposed discipline supervised by the custodians of the social order. As far as the ritual, especially the ritual celebration, is concerned, it is likely to become a certain derivate of spectacle—a ceremonial spectacle. This is the only apparent option when what is left of the sacred is exposed as a man-made mythology. Thus, the disintegration of traditional, small communities, and with them the gradual disappearance or transformation of religious and agricultural rituals, has left a void that is gradually being filled by mostly secular celebrations along with some civic rituals. There are three prevalent categories of secular celebrations, all of which can be characterized as being organized from above by specially assigned experts. First, there are the state rituals and celebrations orchestrated by governmental agencies, such as the Fourth of July in the United States. Individuals participate mostly in the shape of family celebrations, in addition to a central, state-organized event arranged as a media spectacle with the participation of politicians and celebrities. Government ceremonies, such as on Memorial Day, as well as historic events, such as the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day, have become special media spectacles rather than days of mass participation. The second category is the ethnic or ethnic/regional festival, such as St. Patrick’s Day, the Chinese New Year, Mardi Gras, or Oktoberfest in the United States or Folklorama in Manitoba, Canada, which are organized by local authorities and regional ethnic organizations. The parades, the folk-dancing, the merrymaking centered around ethnic food are painstakingly organized spectacles, controlled and supervised by the police, the organizers, activists, and especially by the ubiquitous TV cameras. 73

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In the third category are the cyclic commercial entertainment festivals organized by entrepreneurs with some assistance from the local cultural authorities. These include musical events such as rock, count and jazz festivals, but also classical music festivals, such as TangleWood in Massachusetts, USA, or theater festivals, such as Stratford in Ontario, Canada; the annual theater festival in Edinburgh, Scotland; the Jerusalem Arts Festival; or the Berlin Film Festival. All of these festivals are broadly publicized events and, in most cases, annual media opportunities that transform them into cultural spectacles, generally perceived as respectable middle-class events. In all three categories the connection between the individual and the gathering is ephemeral, weak and insignificant, involving some recreational catharsis and sociality but not coalescing into any major collective sense of strength and togetherness, and consequently not leaving any imprint on the individual’s consciousness. Similarly inconsequential are most current political rituals and rites of passage. If ritual, including celebrations, is a mechanism that synchronizes and bridges between individual aspirations and collective ideals, as well as between sell-reference and collective symbols, then the omnipresent state of anomie that assumes a crisis of credibility in the collective mythology renders such a mechanism superfluous. Because individuals can no longer experience that primordial and authentic state of powerful togetherness except during such extraordinary times as war, natural disasters, or epidemics on the one hand, and exceptional moments of achievement on the other, rituals now only evoke and remind collective history of former periods of strength and glory, albeit mostly incongruously in regard to present patterns of social significance. Happy are the few for whom in our present age of disjunction and ruptures the present is in fact a remembered past that has the capacity to appease the present experience of angst with the joy and strength of time immemorial. By overrepresenting the past collective mythology, while for the most part not having a current social referent, contemporary ritual becomes an overbearing occasion for vacuous nostalgia, devoid of any meaningful inspiration for the majority who cannot relate to it. In general, a tendency to overrepresent reality may be an indication of the stress on ritual as a cultural, autonomous mechanism with no social base underlying its representations. Culture has a propensity to overrepresent when the social is weak, whereas the social side tends to be overrepresented when the culture is less relevant. But because both 74

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culture and the social are interconnected, culture cannot continue to overrepresent without the support of an intense social life, nor can the latter make much sense of its actions without underpinning them through cultural symbols and commentaries. Durkheim (1912/1965) argues that sacredness is the representation of collective ideals generated during times of intense social life transcended into sacred symbols (whereas rituals are, among other things, mechanisms of evocation of these). Following Durkheim’s line of thought, one can argue that when the social life is intense, the ritual symbols are either a part of hegemonic ideology or in competition with it. If co-opted by the dominant ideology, the ritual is meaningful only as a positive instrument legitimizing and reconciling the social order through metaphysical symbols; and if in competition, it is meaningful only if it can suggest the path to an alternative vision. It is also possible that when social life functions at ordinary intensity, then ritual is perfunctorily received as part of the effort intended to maintain the belief in collective strength. By providing a compelling opportunity to bring people together for a common purpose, ritual in itself, regardless of the symbolism (though it is difficult to separate between the two facets) might contribute to the continued flow of collective energy. In such a case, ritual is seen as an accepted but independent cultural practice, its symbols coexisting side by side with the dominant social symbols. At other times, when the social life disappoints, ritual holds the possibility of becoming both the vehicle and the occasion to revitalize confidence in the group and consequently to revive social ideals. Under such circumstances, ritual is significantly under pressure to evoke those shared moments of collective strength and glory; and by doing so, it is viewed as a possible mechanism to renew belief in the power of the group. In this case, ritual is regarded as a dramatic event, although its significance and symbolism may be debatable and problematic for some, while providing a source of spell-binding belief for others. Furthermore, to revitalize confidence in the group or to evoke earlier and more fortunate times of collective heritage demands the prerequisite of an appropriate structural relationship to provide organic conjunctions between the individual and the collective with its center and representations. Such structural appropriateness prepares people for a comparison between the collective past and the present, between “those times” and “these times.” However, when 75

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there is a loosely defined collective with an amorphous identity, shifting centers, and unauthoritative symbolic representations, as is characteristic of the contemporary groups, then the sacred becomes feeble and the ritual that is supposed to serve it becomes insignificant. In other words, a certain historical social time that succeeded in producing an event of collective solidarity that further underwent a process of divinization and consequently created a sacred collective mythology, however a temporal and universal, cannot be currently embraced without a meaningful appropriation of its content; that is, no past reference can become relevant as long as it cannot be sustained by the present social arrangements. Furthermore, the continuing acceptance of past mythology as a sacred symbolic system depends on the fundamental supposition that this sacred symbolic system continues to reflect a collective destiny beyond concrete social circumstances and specific individuals in addition to perception of a supernatural, metaphysical dimension. The main features of the individual’s personal network—such as temporal and fragmented relationships, stress on individuality and everyday life, all in a general context that regards social order as vulnerable and weak—are not conducive to preserving past sacred mythology and its symbols. Hence, the crisis becomes inherent, and the ritual is less and less inspiring. Having lost the power to inspire and thus to regenerate a social energy as well as to mobilize masses, rituals become excessively spectacle-oriented, stressing artistic performances and theatrical enactments. In other words, the artistic and aesthetic elements have developed from being auxiliary props to becoming the focus of the ritual. This, in a sense, is coherent with the increase in veneration of the individual and its self-expressions. The Exhaustion of Ideologies and the Crisis of Social References The prevalent sense of a vulnerable social order could be at least partly attributed to what Baudrillard (1983a) termed “the crisis of social reference”; and that, in its turn, can be traced both to changes in the relationship between the individual and the group (as has been already argued), and to historical exhaustion of ideologies and social utopias. It is not difficult to comprehend this crisis of reference in light of the recent disillusionment with Western capitalism and Western socialism, not to mention Communism and Maoism. There is 76

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a disappointment in the welfare state and unions, in science and technology with their associated dangers to the environment as well as to the job market. In short, the disillusionment has brought about apathy among the majority; and among a few, particularly working-class European youth, it has created a readiness to embrace neofascism. The exhaustion of Western sociopolitical ideologies, while the welfare state’s institutions seem to be on the brink of collapse, is taking place in a context characterized by relative economic insecurity, especially among the middle class, that is geared toward consumerism on the one hand, and social problems, such as drugs, alcohol, and stress, on the other hand. A perpetual search for leadership on both sides of the Atlantic has yielded an acute sense that the present malaise of Western society requires the remedy of altogether new and different kinds of leaders who are yet to make their appearance. The election of President Obama in 2008 was, one may assume, the direct outcome of such a profound discontent. In summary, the social ideals that once defined and focused political energies, inspired new challenges for reform, paved the way to a more flexible stratification, and gave legitimization to a secular morality have reached a point of ineffectiveness, incapable of mobilizing and fulfilling expectations. In the meantime, no sweeping new ideology or set of visionary ideals has replaced the old ones in defining the present social reality. Moreover, the inadequacy of the present collective references has given rise to a restless search for collective references centered around loose social movements, some of which have been around for some time, such as the environmentalists, the feminists with their derivates, or such alternative visions as New Age, self-actualization, and selfimprovement. Common to all these is the unspoken assumption that there is an urgent need to reestablish a balance in the individual’s life, to recreate the harmony destroyed by contemporary living conditions, thereby bringing people back to peace with nature, encouraging women’s contribution to culture, liberating the irrational mystic, and freeing subconscious fears. The individual’s redemption as a social cause has brought about the ascent of social references that have naturally focused on the individual’s contentment with the social environment. Consequently, this trend has also focused obsessively on “normality” as a reference that asserts the precedence of the individual over external detrimental forces. The American media, among others, reflects this context and 77

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dutifully supplies, apparently on the demand of its viewers and readers, a disproportional number of stories centering around borderline or problematic cases of normality that also force heated public debates. This is exemplified by such recent cases as the episode of Michael Jackson’s death, the execution of a serial killer, the O. J. Simpson new trial on robbery and others. This preoccupation with normality purports to set some normative social boundaries in an increasingly violent public world. The example of normality as a relatively new social construction is a good case in point of a public attempt to intervene in the world of individuals and their private lives by forcing a transformation of few individual uncommon cases into collective moral references. It does this by bringing private affairs into public debate and thus compelling individual’s references to obey normative rules. In short, the effort is not to stop an onslaught of individual reference at the expense of collective ones (often by selecting the unusual ones) but to attempt to mediate between individual’s references and the public sphere, that meeting ground of all networks, with the purpose that some kind of order may be imposed. Individual’s references alone, without being tied to a higher order of generality, may become dangerously incestuous, likely to implode into an idiosyncratic reality defined by fantasy, among other things. The ubiquitous mass media in particular has become the most powerful intermediating system, but it is evidently not the only one. The demand for mediation arises mainly from both the structure of an individual’s personal network and the nature of the relationships they incur. Because the network is the creation of an individual and there are theoretically as many networks as there are individuals, and because one knows what is taking place only in one’s own network and marginally in a few others, one perennially senses an acute need for a broader scope of knowledge, information, and modes of interpretation beyond one’s own network. Furthermore, an individual is forced to seek through his or her own limited and isolated relationships necessary information about other networks, as well as to be continuously alert to discover basic strategies for improving his or her own network. Such questions as “How did they get to know one another?” “Where did they meet?” “How does one find out about…?” have become common exchanges. Hence, the individual is compelled to seek constantly for “what is going on,” to be constantly tuned to anywhere that might possess and provide information and 78

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interpretations about other networks and their subdivisions as well as strategies about “networking.” The Increasing Intermediation of Interpersonal Relations Durkheim’s assumed observation that people do not think, but rather participate in collective thinking, could never have been more currently correct. The only difference is that in contemporary society people participate in a common thinking process through intermediation. Thus a connection to mediating systems becomes a necessity, and mass media is the quintessential type among such systems. It is the increasing intermediation of human relations in contemporary society that has eroded the collective sense of power and debilitated the potency of moral transcendency and eventually the possibility of emerging sacred symbols. The interposition of various intermediaries in the relationships between individuals interferes with their awareness of being part of an identifiable collectivity and therefore weakens the necessary strength to produce a vital sense of common morality and shared destiny that can be transcended into sacred entities. A few specialized intermediary agencies stand out; they have become reified with a power that imposes dependency and, like everything socially invented, have superseded their original purpose. These agencies, which include many of what R. Barthes termed myth makers with a life of their own, become so autonomous that they tend to simulate the life of some kind of community and even simulate institutional practices such as politics. Such is the case with mass media, but also advertising offices, the commercial world, computer networks, leisure clubs, adult education classes, therapy support groups, volunteer political organizations, international exchange programs, manpower offices, travel agencies, and others. In total, the intermediary agencies have become a simulacrum apparatus that provides a false sense of fermenting social energy. The individual’s personal network that is built upon, and in its turn generates, excessive individual representations harmonizes with the intermediary simulacrum because the latter bestows the sense that it is capable of filling the unbearable anomic gap between the strong individual representations and the feeble collective ones. In a society displaying excess in individual representations, an anomic disbelief also looms large; and in the restive quest to put an end to such a state, any display of intensive signs of social activity is credited with 79

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the quality of a center. The “noise” simulation of many specialized intermediary agencies seems sometimes deceptively to convey the character of a social center, though most of these are no more than ephemeral subcultures or temporary consumer groups. The multiplicity of intermediary agencies that operate through self-promotion, ostentatiousness, and the high profile of publicity strive openly to succeed in the market place—be it political, economic, or cultural—while indirectly and often unconsciously participating in a latent struggle to define the newly emerging public sphere. In times when the anomie becomes incorporated into daily practices, when interpersonal relations are mostly intermediated and thus only scattered and relatively weak social centers that produce low social energy emerge, culture, rather than the social factor, has become the dominant and vital force in defining the public sphere. Analyzing the postmodern era, Gergen (1991) argues, “In the postmodern view social outcry is not a matter of internal belief, basic morality or deep-seated feelings; it is simply another form of performance” (186). In a time of relatively reduced social effervescence—avoiding Baudrillard’s (1983b) use of the extreme “social demise”—cultural performances, especially spectacles, various ceremonies, and much of what is subsumed under the term secular rituals, are often confusingly regarded as social. The marginal social effervescence elicited from the contemporary cultural mechanisms does not contribute much to group solidarity and revitalization of social action. This brings us back to the position that contemporary rituals have become autonomous cultural mechanisms and thus strongly oriented toward performances, congruent in general with the stress on spectacle as a major feature of the network culture. In summary, this chapter has attempted to analyze the crisis of the ritual by putting forward an interpretation of the state of anomie characteristic of contemporary society. On a further level of inquiry, it has been suggested that the individual’s personal network structural arrangement that increasingly defines the individual–group relationship also holds the key to the current type of anomie, and that it may provide an insight into the relationship between individual versus collective references and the intermediating efforts to transform the former into the latter. The mediation of social relations and the emergence of the simulacrum apparatus are seen as one of the major factors in the crisis of the ritual and the triumph of the spectacle. 80

5 Rituals of Political Purification in East-Central Europe after the Fall of Communism Background The dramatic revolutions of 1989 in East-Central Europe were followed by unprecedented sociopolitical changes that pointed toward a difficult period of transition to a new form of sociopolitical order. The sudden overthrow of forty-five years of communist regimes was accompanied by a general outburst of joy, a sense of liberation and renewal that swept all. Shortly after, the general elation started to be mixed with a more somber mood. Individuals, countless new political organizations, and certainly the new leaders were confronted with the challenge of what to do with the remnants of the old system and how to conceive of a new order. Mainly, they were forced to face the painful transition between the two orders. Since the revolutions were short-lived, though intense, events, and in most of the cases, with the exception of Romania, nonviolent ones, with only active participation from the capitals and few major cities such as Leipzig and Timisoara, the transition to a new sociopolitical order fell upon these societies with such a rapidity, that ostensibly found them unprepared. All the questions concerning what morals could be learned and what visions might be posed, questions that under normal circumstances might evolve and take shape in the course of longer struggles and over lengthier periods of political negotiations were raised only in the wake of the sudden fall of the communist regimes. The collective confrontation with crucial questions about the changes these societies underwent during the past forty years, who is to be blamed, what should be done now, how to immediately restore a 81

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public order, and what is the best political and economic model to be pursued, visibly burdened everyone. The urgent need to make quick decisions and to offer immediate solutions for a multitude of social, political, and economic problems, pressed every individual, every incumbent and social organization to choose identities and take positions which were often changed or reversed in the process. All generally agreed that the situation was confusing, unstable, passions were high, and people were riddled with anxiety about the future. The conditions of sharp transition between two opposing sociopolitical orders, the sudden gaps resulting from radical economical transformation (and not the least from rampant speculations), the pressing demands for drastic changes in “mentalities” (this was the preferred term of East-Central Europeans for dependency on governmental sources of employment and welfare which caused lack of motivation to work and corrupting practices) and last but not least, the abrupt avalanche of human rights focusing on the individual’s rights to freedom—all these made the East-Central European societies a unique sociological case study at that time. The East-Central European case was seemingly without precedent among the societies that had recently undergone a sudden, radical sociopolitical and economical change in such a short space of time. Neither Iran’s Islamic revolution, nor Spain’s shift from a totalitarian to a democratic regime display such a total transformation. Iran’s Islamic revolution was the result of a long political struggle during which a powerful infrastructure was built within the Shah’s regime. A majority of Iran’s population were, in any case, ardent Muslims, whose political and social aspirations were subordinated to their Islamic interpretations. Ultimately, there was not a great difference in the economical order between the pre- and post-Islamic revolution. Spain, a country to which many among the East-Central European intelligentsia looked for inspiration as an approximate similar model, is also a very different case (Edles 1998). Though Spain was governed politically for many decades by an authoritarian regime, it was a society still largely connected with the rest of Western Europe, both economically and culturally. The economical system was based on free enterprise which enabled a smooth transition to its integration in the European Free Market, while politically many of Spain’s social institutions (such as the courts), together with its Royal House prepared themselves toward transition to democracy long before the actual move. Above all, both Iran and Spain worked out the transition 82

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within an already existing consensual frame of reference: the former within a political interpretation of Islamic religious precepts, the latter with the clear vision of its incorporation within the structures of a united Western Europe. The unique conditions under which the East European societies made their historical passage to a different type of sociopolitical order were also the source of potential danger: first and foremost the collapse of social structure, blatant nationalistic acts, destabilizing political schisms, violent ethnic strife, contradictory and rapid shifts of economical policies accompanied alternately by virulent strikes and unrealistic expectations; anarchic groups, especially of the neoNazi type, crimes, and various abusive acts of public disorder which took advantage of the new individual rights (Elster, Offe, and Preuss 1997). The signs of potential peril were visible everywhere in EastCentral Europe. Fundamentally at the nexus that provides the coherence between individual and collective, the long-desired changes by the people of East-Central Europe were in danger of bringing about a severe anomic lapse. By this term we refer to a sense of absence of guiding moral authority, an insecurity in regard to the normative consensus, an incongruous perception of reality (Hilbert 1986). In spite of the various degrees of anomic symptoms that always appear at such extraordinary times, it is cardinal to ask how East-Central European societies coped with these intricate anomic perils; that is, how the potential dangers of anomic effects inherent to the circumstances were kept at bay. It seems that the same unique circumstances that had infused the period following liberation with anomic uncertainty, produced the very frames of orientation that helped create the coordinates of the emerging a new social, political, and economical map. Three frames of orientation born out of the dramatic events that swept East-Central Europe became the focus of moral guidance during those confusing times, mobilizing and shaping chaotic political energies, providing new sets of social and economic attitudes, furnishing public life with newly recovered symbols, and even inspiring self-revisions of personal life. Since the history of the previous forty years under a communist regime was still experienced as degrading and emotionally painful, while the first years after the events of 1989 were so chaotic and abnormal and the future still nebulous, it became evident to many East-Central Europeans that the legacy of the past must undergo a 83

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process of purification: the present should serve as a time of practical rebirth of a new normality, and the future should be viewed as an unique opportunity to articulate a new vision. The preoccupation of these societies concomitantly with the past, present, and future destiny was, to some extent, the result of the nature of the events which took everyone by surprise, even those who actively participated in them. Thus, the swift revolutions had not permitted long periods of reflection, public debate, demystification of historical myths, testing possible collective visions and deliberately enactive acts of moral purification, all of which tend to evolve during longer political struggles. The three frames of orientation I am suggesting for comprehending the sociopolitical processes in East-Central Europe can be termed as follows: Purification, Rebirth, and Vision. The terms are helpful in describing the totality of collective processes that were underway in the East-Central European societies during the first years after the revolutions. The three frameworks convey also how these societies came to terms with both the old and new orders and the dramatic transition between them. The frames of orientation provide an understanding, a new blueprint of sociopolitical attitudes and beliefs. Pursuing Durkheim’s line of thought, anomic conditions during such extraordinary upheavals, are likely to generate frames of orientation such as rituals of purification (Durkheim 1972, 219–28). In her well-known anthropological study of the concepts of pollution and taboo, much under the influence of Durkheim, Mary Douglas stated the basic assumption when she argued that “I believe that some pollution are used as analogies for expressing a general view of the social order” (1980, 3). At a deeper level, the importance and even the structure of such type of rituals of purification is that they are concerned with a representation of fault, of a wrongdoing. Ricoeur (1967, 25) was especially insightful when he argued “Dread of the Impure and rites of purification are in the background of all our feelings and all our behavior relating to fault.” In a broader perspective, the theoretical problem is constructing new symbolic boundaries. That is, the role of rituals of purification is to demarcate the boundaries between two different periods: before 1989 and after it, between past and present. Since in the case of East-Central Europe these rituals take place at the junction between two sociopolitical orders the very occurrence, of what is termed here as rituals, the participation and the accompanying commentaries to them become not only the mechanism defining the 84

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new boundaries but the boundaries themselves. That is, those acts and events that are considered to be occasions for purifying, take place at the same moment that the old time is changed with the new one. In demarcating symbolic boundaries, the rituals make order in the midst of confusion and disorientation by explaining and interpreting: what has happened, what was the fault, who is to be blamed. However, underlying these interpretations is the fundamental metaphorical divide between defilement and purity, between past and present. The demarcation of symbolic boundaries aims at the inner invisible world of individuals. It targets at reshaping the consciousness of individuals along the lines of a new order of things. That is to say, it induces the consciousness to an unequivocal recognition of evil from good, in this transitional and quasi-chaotic context. The concern with “the fault,” perceived as an entity that tends to grow intolerably so that it eventually destroys everything around it, motivates disclosure of the source of defilement and the divulging of its agents. Thus, the enactment of rituals of purification is based on exposing fault, be it a concrete or a symbolic one, and also expressing the threat of its various embodiments. I assume that when the source of fault is a total system, an omnipresent power whose potential is always deviously destructive, the representation of such a negative force is associated with evil. Evil, should thus be viewed as the generic source of fault; if the source is a total ideological system, such as the communism of East-Central Europe, then the term evil is readily appropriated in both public and private discourse of this region. The purpose of representing fault in Rituals of Purification is to induce human consciousness to distinguish evil from its opposite, that is, from a moral state. After all, human beings are adaptable creatures who tend to take the reality in which they live as taken for granted. Practical necessities and lack of reference impose a habitual consciousness, a routine of things reified as a “natural” state of affairs. Still the adaptation is not absolute, that is to say, it does not eradicate critical thinking and reflexive morality. But for a population living for many years under communism, regarded as a state of affairs ruled by oppressive regime, it would be difficult to recognize an alternative. Therefore, it required a powerfully evocative enactment, for which no artificial contrivance was necessary since collective life itself provided the specific occasions and acts for transforming individual consciousness. To change individual consciousness in regard to social life meant 85

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also to impose a different referential system at the center of which is a redefinition of the Sacred and the Profane along with their variants and derivates. The social changes that East-Central societies have undergone during and in the post-1989 events, were reflected in the changes of the sacred vs. profane relations underwent. That is, the sociopolitical changes have forced a redefinition of sacred and profane, as well as a new relocation and a new redistribution of these two fundamental categories. The concern here is with those type of rituals purported to restore those conditions that enable a new relation to the sacred. In other words, the specificity of rituals of purification is not celebration of the sacred, but cleansing the sources that may endanger it. In so doing, these rituals restate a new moral balance. Rituals of political purification are those acts and activities that produce symbolic action meant to represent the purification of a sociopolitical order or components of it. These acts and activities demonstrably bring into view, as part of the course of events the confrontation between sacred and profane, good and evil, moral and immoral. Evocative acts and activities are perceived and interpreted in light of a symbolic action they bear to signify purification from an afflicted collective condition. In the context of the 1989 revolutions, the acts and events termed here as rituals of purification, have induced wide collective involvement, intense participatory debates and self-reflection, without constructing specific ritualistic time, setting, and content. That is, there was here an overlap between the live, flowing acts and activities, and between the would-be enacted character of rituals. These are rituals in action. They are transformative and reflexive at once, experiential and representational simultaneously. The present analysis addresses only the frame of purification and within it only a few classes of what I term “rituals of political purification.” These classes included the following intertwined activities: the debate about informers and dissidents; dismantling of the secret police; exposing collaborators among the new national leaders; opening the secret police files; trials of former political leaders. Of course, everything in such times is political that has purifying implications: changing the anthem, changing the name of the streets and squares, the icons on coins, rewriting textbooks, etc. Only a few illustrative examples will be presented in this analysis. 86

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The Informers vs. Dissidents’ Debate The severity of the public debate over the depth of moral depravation varied from one East-Central European country to another. At one end of the scale were Poland and Hungary, followed by the Czech Republic and the former East Germany (GDR), while at the other extreme there were Bulgaria, Albania, and Romania. It seems that the perception of moral depletion of East-Central European society was internally connected with heroic events, militant activities, or single courageous acts carried out during the former communist regimes, whose symbolic weight retrospectively fulfilled a certain role in the post-revolutionary collective self-image. This perception of the extent of resistance during the communist reign bore a compensatory relationship to the sense of moral deterioration. It is perhaps not by chance that all public debates concerning dissidence and dissidents sprang up in conjunction with the dismantling of the Secret Police and divulging of informants. The two debates, with all their moral derivatives, auxiliary argumentations, and national self-image implications, played out the balance of a traumatized collective conscience. Even in countries where a full-fledged dissident movement had developed, such as Poland and the former Czechoslovakia, just weeks after the fall of the regimes a discussion broke out, especially among the intelligentsia and professionals, with regard to who was a true dissident, when did a real dissident prove himself/herself, when precisely did he or she join the illegal organization. For example, a debate took place as to whether or not exiled writers such as Sckoresky and Kundera of the former Czechoslovakia should be accorded any merit for leaving their country in 1968 and living in the West ever since. In Romania, where the meager number of dissidents and their isolated activities stood out in one of the most oppressive countries, and political disobedience could hardly have passed unpunished, a bitter national debate engulfed everyone after December 1989, with regard to who were the true dissidents and what exactly “dissident” meant under those conditions. Personalities such as the writers Cornea and Dinescu who involved themselves intensely in post-revolution politics were challenged with regard to whether they were truly worthy to be called dissidents. A similar debate centered around exiled writers such as Romanian writers Goma, Lovinescu, and Jerunca. In the former East Germany the debate centered especially around three preeminent writers: Wolf Biermann, who left East Germany and 87

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lived in the West, Christa Wolf who was accused of having quietly collaborated with the Stasi, and Sasha Anderson, who was revealed to have been one of the major informers of the Stasi among the intelligentsia. Biermann accused Christa Wolf and Anderson of immoral behavior and a major debate gripped the former communist Germany. A graduate student in Sociology at the University of Bucharest insightfully observed in a private communication in 1990: There is a present tendency that those considered “dissidents” be discredited, since many people believe it impossible that someone else could have been different than they were. Therefore, they believe some kind of immoral and evil behavior is hidden behind the righteousness and they easily conclude that all dissidents were agents of the Securitate.

In Poland and Hungary, where uprisings took place during the communist past, and where underground or semi-underground oppositional civil and religious movements operated, the collective self-perception is different from that of Romania and Bulgaria. Nevertheless, because of uprisings and the past existence of dissident movements in Poland and Hungary, the blame and the negative perception of those who took no part in any dissent activity is stronger than in Romania and Bulgaria where there were relatively few acts of public resistance (Siklova 1991). Similarly, an important factor in the formation of a new collective self-image depended on whether the public debates in East-Central Europe stressed the fact that these countries were conquered by the Soviet Union, thus turning the people into oppressed subjects and victims, or whether the accent was placed upon passive participation in the corrupt system and self-inflicted moral damage. These alternatives held future repercussions for almost every aspect of these societies. Against this background, in an astoundingly short period of time after the fall of the regimes, passionate demands to begin at once a purifying process of the society from the entrenched vices of communism became the central theme both of individuals’ civic preoccupations and of public debate. The outcry to exorcise the “evil of communism” was among the first and few issues of a new evolving public agenda that drew a wide consensus, regardless of social position or political views. The justifications for these acts of purification as well as awareness of their dangers, can be succinctly illustrated in an article by the 88

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famous Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce which was reprinted in the influential Romanian Weekly “22” in the summer of 1991. In this article, published originally in Italy in 1944, Croce is concerned with the moral purification and acts of vengeance on the part of ordinary citizens against the sympathizers of Mussolini’s Fascist regime after its defeat in 1944. He warns his countrymen not to let themselves be led by the impulses of vengeance because such impulses are self-destructive. However, the right to purify society can be given, he claims, if its purpose is to create a better world. Therefore argues Croce, only if the ideal is to contribute to a better society than before do people have the right to purify, i.e., to throw out from positions of power those who jeopardize the freedom and space of their fellow citizens. Toppling the Oppressive Symbol: The Secret Police The secret police was not only a fearful instrument of the state in suppressing any form of disobedience and dissent, but also an oppressive political symbol of the regime. The urgency of dismantling the secret police, with its wide ramifications, was both an act of necessity as well as a symbolic statement against the tyranny of the communist state. In almost all East-Central European countries, in the few weeks after the revolutions huge demonstrations took place against the remnants of the secret police, or against the slow pace in which the new regimes proceeded in dismantling the notorious institutions and bringing its chieftains to court. After the overthrow of the East German communist regime, thousands of demonstrators violently broke into the Stasi buildings in Leipzig, Berlin, and Dresden searching for secret files and demanding that the Stasi’s employees be sent to physical labor camps. At the particular moment when the angry crowds forced their way into the Stasi headquarters, they seemed to have at least affirmed victory over the communist state by violating and conquering its most dreadful instrument. These acts eventually became symbolic events, i.e., those who suffered from the abusive activities of the secret police “liberated” themselves and the country, “purified its soul” by burning the Security Police headquarters building and demanding to immediately witness its total destruction. When a West German newspaper published the 9,251 addresses of the Stasi’s functionaries in a special edition of 20 pages, as well as the hidden apartments from which informants were recruited, together with the addresses of their private homes and vacation resorts, the 89

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act again took on a symbolic dimension. It was as though those who actively took part in the most secretive, abusive, and suppressive state mechanism (“the brute” as they were dubbed), were at last brought into public view, their true and complete identity discovered by their victims. Exposing the Collaborators among the New Political Personalities During the months following the Czechoslovakian revolution, when Havel had already become the interim president, and a former dissident was appointed interior minister in charge of dismantling of the Secret Police, many ordinary citizens persisted in believing that the infamous police still existed either in semi-formal organizations or underground. The urge was not only to discover the extent of the activities of the former Secret Police, but also the extent to which previous unknown informers who had already inflicted immeasurable damage on so many people, could infiltrate the new political parties and thus again attain positions of power. In May 1990, a week prior to the first post-revolution national election, the Czech Ministry of the Interior released a list of secret informers, among which were some prominent leaders of new political parties. One of those found to have had ties with the previous Secret Police was the leader of the KDU (The Christian and Democratic Union), a party considered to be second in popularity after the Civic Forum (the political movement of Havel and his supporters). The public scandal that ensued following the publication of the names caused many resignations and a loss of votes. A similar event occurred in East Germany where, after allegations that Ibrahim Bohme, the Chairman of the fledging East German Social Democratic Party had had links with the Stasi, he immediately resigned upon denying the charges. Luther De Maiziere, the first democratically elected prime minister of East Germany, who led East Germany into unification with West Germany and eventually became a cabinet minister under Chancellor Kohl, also resigned a few months after the unification of the government. His resignation followed public allegations by a West German newspaper accusing the former opposition leader of collaborating with the Stasi during the communist reign. A West German Interior Ministry Committee found that De Maiziere had indeed collaborated with the Stasi between 1981 and 1989. This is only an illustration of the many famous dissidents who turned 90

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out to be informers while the total number of informers, for example, in East Germany is estimated to be at least two hundred thousand. Just after the events of 1989, Peter Beron, the undisputed leader of the Bulgarian opposition, together with another seventy parliamentarians from the opposition was charged with collaborating with the Secret Police under the toppled regime. Beron’s image was badly damaged, although he tried to justify himself by arguing that he was assisting the State rather than the Communist Party. In the ensuing period, Beron again attempted to enter politics and gain his countrymen’s support but the stigma attached to him was so powerful that in spite of apologies, excuses, remorse, and efforts on his part to prove political astuteness in that difficult interim period in Bulgaria, his recuperation was slow and was punctuated with contemptuous reminders of his past. Years after the revolutions there were new revelations of Secret Police files all over East-Central Europe, especially in the case of high-profile incumbents or politicians. These revelations brought on awareness to the nature of totalitarian regimes and their repressive methods, along with the still-needed motivation to do justice and to correct the past moral defilement. Poland decided rather late to pass a law that would discose and examine the Secret Police archive. For several good years there were rumors that Malgogita Nieszbitowska, an aide to Waleça and for some the symbol of Solidarity movement collaborated with the Secret Police. When the file was disclosed in 2005 the rumor seemed to be founded in the astonishment of those who were inspired by her and believed in her public personality. In April 2002, the files of the former Hungarian Police indicated beyond any doubts that the Hungarian Prime Minister at that time, Peter Medgyessy, collaborated for a long period of time with the Secret Police. One parliamentary committee was delegated to reveal the role of Medgyessy alone in the relationship with the Secret Police. The affair, as one may have expected, brought with it a major political crisis and fierce accusations flew over political lines. In Romania, in 2006, the former Minister of Justice Rodica Stanoiu, a major political figure, was accused by the National Council of Studies into Security Archive (CNSAS) to have been employed for years as an informer of Securitate. Her code names, the officers with whom she collaborated, and some of the people to whom she provided information was revealed. 91

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Of course, these selected cases stunned the public opinion since the collaborators were well-known political personalities. The question is, what is the significance of revealing fifteen or seventeen years after the change of regimes, collaborative activities of politicians? Is this a way to settle political accounts and to use the information as a means of subverting the reputation of politicians or is this part of the process of purification that began a few days following the revolution and is still ongoing as long as it is necessary to carry a moral lesson. Practically and considering the present political map of East-Central European societies, these representative cases may galvanize the democratic and civil forces to setup a new political culture. The Particular Case of Romania In Romania, the demands to uproot the famous Securitate as a purifying prerequisite were stronger than anywhere else in East Europe because of this agency’s vast repertoire of oppressive activities, its notorious cruelty, as well as its brutal attempt at suppressing the revolution and human sufferance during the December 1989 events. A few months after the revolution, the interim government brought the top echelon of the Securitate to trial. These officials were not charged, as might be expected, for extensive abuse, illegal acts, and grave crimes committed over the years, but specifically for attempts of genocide in complicity with Ceausescu during the events of the revolution only. Many expressed their disappointment at the fact that the charges were too narrowly localized on the events of December 1989. For several months in 1990, and until their violent dispersion, the huge evening demonstrations in Bucharest University Square, by now a recognized ritual of purification in their own right, demanded a governmental declaration that all the elements of the Securitate be disbanded, the list of informers disclosed, and many responsible officials and officers be tried even for such symbolic activities such as perpetration of fear, intimidation, abuse of civic power, censorship, etc., whose cumulative effect had been the moral debilitation of an entire country. Both the interim and the elected Romanian government were under constant pressure to reassure its citizens that the feared Securitate was no longer in existence, that its previous agents were under control and that no similar governmental institution would ever replace it. Every few months the Romanian Ministry of Interior in office, together with the Head of the Security Department, either under pressure of 92

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huge demonstrations and the unrelenting demands from the newly free press to uncover the abuses of the Securitate and its informers, or because of its need to prove a different image as the crusader of a new order, made public a new revelation about the role or methods of the Securitate in the suppression of citizens prior to the revolution. In March 1990, for example, state television produced a program showing how the citizens of the country were subjected to constant telephone surveillance. It was assumed that an overwhelming majority of the adult population viewed the program and for weeks the press commented on it. The newly formed Romanian Information Security Department which seemed to have openly incorporated many of the personnel of the former Securitate was permanently accused of both hiring infamous individuals from the “old boys” network of the Securitate, as well as continuing its methods of supervision of private citizens. No ordinary Romanian believed that the reorganized and assumingly de-politicized secret service did not intercept telephone conversations and mail from overseas or manipulate public opinion and elections in favor of the present government. This kind of suspicion appeared to be endemic, as long as people viewed the present government as being filled with turncoats and old communist opportunists, and as long as the government did not make public the files of the Securitate. In the summer of 1991, villagers in the remote mountain village of Berevesti discovered by chance a large amount of Securitate documents and files that had been expediently dumped. When the scandal exploded the dormant fears of conspiracies by incumbents in the government who feared being compromised by their past ties with the Securitate ignited public opinion. People wrote letters to editors, newspapers published indignant editorials, and government officials felt it was their duty to defend themselves and condemn those elements who opposed democracy. Finally, the Minister of the Interior promised an inquiry into the matter. The Berevesti affair awakened many ghosts that have not yet been exorcised and still dwell on the dark side of the collective memory of that society. One of those ghosts particularly troubles the Romanians. During the events of December 1989 it was commonly believed that foreign terrorists, especially of Arab origin, had, together with security forces, killed in cold blood young people who defied Ceausescu’s regime. They were believed to be accountable for most of the killings and rumors 93

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had it that these were specially trained forces, brutal and very loyal to Ceaucescu. A different variant contends that alongside the Arab terrorists stationed on Romanian soil, there existed a unit specially trained in urban combat, consisting of orphans whom the dictator Ceaucescu had taken under wing, and who went into battle on his behalf with an uncanny loyalty to their “father.” In spite of the strong rumors, no hard evidence ever came up to prove or refute them, nor was there any official attempt to provide a competent version of the events, or to determine whether they were fictions or disinformation. This situation caused many people to harbor a cynical attitude toward the new government and its policies of purifying its system from the former communists; in the final analysis, too many ordinary citizens felt unmotivated to cooperate with the Iliescu’s government in implementing its economical policies due to its perceived nonchalance in pursuing the former regime’s incumbents and trying them for abuse. The Use of Public Commissions Had the government made a serious attempt in the first months after December 1989 to establish a prominent public commission enjoying high credibility, that would have been taken as a major act of asserting the truth concerning the question that troubled Romanian society: who killed so many of the young protesters during those events? The use of prestigious public commissions as instruments for performing purifying rituals of major controversial collective events is both prevalent and often effective (Haaretz 2002). The public visibility of the process of collecting data, calling witnesses, press conferences, opening up public debates around taken-for-granted values, principles, and moral codes—all these could function as acts of ritual of purification. Several parliamentarian commissions were established in Romania shortly after the events of 1989, none of them possessing the highest moral standing, and none of them legally empowered to have access to secret documents and to bring to trial past incumbents. The outcome was that the results were inconclusive, lacking force to galvanize public opinion or to disturb conventional moral standards. Such committees failed to focus public attention on the total moral failure of a political system and its corrupting impact on Romanian society as a whole. Consequently, what really happened in the subsequent days after December 22, 1989, in Romania remained an 94

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unresolved yet troublesome historical riddle. Whether the event was a revolution or a mere coup d’état became the topic of a persistent debate that generated accusations and counter-accusations, arguments and counter-arguments which continue obsessively to haunt that society ever since. Only a few good years after, in the 2000s, the Romanian Parliament voted to establish the National Council for the Study of Security Archive (CNSAS). The Council became a powerful institution empowered to disclose the files of informers and collaborators. In spite of political accusations and repeated attempts to delegitimation, the Council succeeded and it still does ten years after, in keeping its moral standing. In Germany the Gauck Authority was established which worked out the ways to open the Secret Police files. As Timothy Garton Ash summed this up: The power is in the hands of the individual citizen: you can choose to read your file, or not to read it. The informer on your file are identified only by code names, but you can request formal confirmation of their true identity. Then you have to decide whether to confront them, or not to confront them; to say something publicly, just to tell close friends, or to close it in your heart. This is the most deep and personal kind of history lesson. (1998, 39)

It is estimated that more than 400,000 people have opened already their Stasi file and another 400,000 are awaiting to do so. Proportional, lower number of people saw their file in the other countries of the former East-Central communist bloc. By the end of the 1990s, Hungary has opened the Historical Office which provided copies of files for those who requested. Yet, only by 2003 a law was passed regulating the access to the files. The Czech Republic published also in 2003, a list of people who collaborated with the Secret Police, St. B. All this after which in the early 1990s, the Czech parliament passed the lustration law that is, forbidding people who were connected to the notorious Secret Police to hold public or state positions. Bulgaria was the last one of the former Communist countries, which set up a mechanism through which it opens the files of its once-feared Secret Police. Such a commission began its work in 2007 by screening the Bulgarian candidates to the European Parliament, then by 2009 it facilitated the access to the famous archive, for the first time in twenty years. It is obvious that the effect of opening the archive of the most secret files in each one of the former communist countries was a dramatic 95

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act. It revealed the total control and supervision of ordinary citizens and the profound implications of it. It is not difficult to presume that the cognizance of it amounted to an act of liberation. The perception of communism as evil, as a fundamental symbolic essence translated into various secular terms, pervaded these public commissions. Evil operates deceptively and secretively; to discover its devious work and to eradicate it, there is need to counter it with a major effort effected by special morally entrusted messengers. The task of these is to uncover evil’s hidden activities, its temptations to corrupt the innocent, to play on weaknesses, and to terrorize the righteous. In mythological terms the symbolism of the public commissions that were established to inquire into the injustice, corruption, abuse, terror, and crimes carried out during the communist reign, was to reveal how the “bond between man and what he considers sacred,” to employ a phrase from Ricoeur (1967, 5) has degenerated. Therefore, the task of such commissions was to recover the bond and to bring back normalcy through rationally defined and morally sanctioned acts. The perception among many East Europeans, especially Romanians, Slovakians, Albanians, and Bulgarians during the first year after the events of 1989 was that “nothing has changed” since the overthrow of the communist regimes. Such a prevailing opinion was expressed in spite of official declarations on the part of the new governments of these countries to shift to a market economy, to facilitate parliamentary control, and to set in motion radical social reforms which seemingly could have satisfied the civic aspirations of the people. Yet, people openly declared their discontent with the governments’ reforms. Their chief argument was that “the same kind of opportunistic individuals” who filled governmental positions in the communist regimes, “got around” and continued to hold key posts, especially in the security services, police army, and the economical apparatus. Debate on the Past Moral Profile of Present Leadership The perception of persisting symbolic impurity had an influence on the overall sense of apathy, fatalism and, in general, a widespread malaise among the population of these countries. Political personalities such as General Stanculescu in Romania who was the deputy army chief during Ceaucescu’s regime and who became the Minister of Defense after the revolution, and General Chitac, also a high-ranking army officer in the previous regime, who was appointed as the powerful Interior Minister in charge of Police, supported the public 96

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perception that no fundamental political changes had yet taken place. Cleaning up the present system of previous governmental incumbents as representatives of the past order, was perceived at a symbolic–mythological level, which at such times is eminently magnified, as capable of warding off the contamination of the new order and the potential defilement of its future deeds. The total dislocation of previous incumbents and the rise to power of new people with a different political outlook should be viewed more than anything else as a change of symbolic icons, representing a different social order. By 1992, the Romanian public opinion became so irritated with the two incumbents, that president Iliescu yielded and the two were forced to resign. After the events of December 1989, in almost every national and public institution of East-Central Europe an internal debate started when the rank-and-file demanded explanations from the leaders of those institutions for past improper and immoral behavior during the communist regime. In Romania, the debate was especially severe. Thus, the army and the police force became the focus of internal political ferment, when low-level officers, either out of political reasons or professional pride, strongly demanded the establishment of commissions to inquire into the role of the army, especially during the events that took place in Timisoara in December 16–20, 1989. On this occasion the army, apparently under the orders of its high officers, fired shots at the civil population during demonstrations. The case of six Romanian military officers asking for the resignation of the Defense and Interior Ministers, which was televised on February 12, 1990 became a milestone, because for the first time in the last forty years the military experienced political dissent within its ranks. The officers claimed that the Interior Minister Chitac directly participated in killings in December 1989 in Timisoara; the officers went on to declare that “we want the truth to be established about the role of the army” (Reuters–AP 1990). Similar accusations were also made within the Orthodox Church of Romania against its head, Theoctist Armasu, who remained in his post until his death in 2007. The story circulating at the time was that at a special meeting of the Church’s leaders in 1990, the head of the Church, submitted his resignation in a dramatic gesture which was rejected by his ardent supporters. However, a few people dared to voice a different opinion, among them a young priest by the name of Bartolomeu Anania who proposed that the head of the Church should 97

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be released from his function since he had not demonstrated any resistance to the previous regime. On the contrary, the Church under Theoctist cooperated with the communist authorities. In fact, without any resistance on the part of the Church, Ceausescu proceeded to demolish hundreds of churches throughout the country. Even a few days before the collapse of the dictator, during the Timisoara riots, Theoctist sent a telegram of support to Ceausescu. It is difficult to know the reason behind such an act, which could have either been a gesture of ingratiation or genuine support for what the communist propaganda presented as the Romanian regime’s stand against the Hungarian Catholic nationalists among the Hungarian minority. Eventually, Theoctist remained for another twenty years in the Holy Seat. Immediately after his death in 2007 and close to the election of the new Head of the Orthodox Church of Romania, the Parliament Commission in charge of revealing the file archive of the Securitate, published the code names of informers of a high-ranking group of clergy. Paradoxically, among those suspected of collaboration with the Secret Police was also the Mitropolite of Cluj-Napoca, Bartolomeu Anania. Interestingly enough, similar complaints were heard from the Bulgarian intelligentsia against the head of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church as well as against the religious leaders of the Bulgarian–Turkish community who, according to rumors, collaborated with the communist government of Todor Jivkov. Similar grievances against the Catholic church, though much milder, were voiced again by the intelligentsia, especially in Slovakia and in the Czech Republic. In both Romania and Bulgaria a popular opinion held long before the revolution that the heads of the local orthodox churches had collaborated with the Secret Security Police and that many priests were paid agents who were asked to spy on potential dissidents and to recruit agents among ethnic communities in the West. Against this background the case of the Polish Church, which stood up and became the major source of resistance and dissent, was very different from the other former Soviet satellites. However, by the late 1990s persistent rumors told of widespread collaboration of highly positioned clergy with the Secret Police. Stanislaw Wilgoz submitted his resignation in January 2007 a few minutes before he was about to be installed as the archbishop of Warsaw. Stanislaw Wilgoz was accused of collaboration with SB officers during the 1980s. One day after Wilgoz stunned his Catholic followers, 98

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the priest Janosh Bielensky also submitted his resignation from the highly respected position as the priest of the famous Cathedral of Wavel at Cracow. Just a week before the papal visit, Benedict XVI in Poland in May 2006, the daily Zycie Warszawy published a report “that a prominent and highly respected priest, Michal Czajkowski had worked for years and provided information on Jerzy Popieluszko, the priest whose kidnapping and murder by SB officers in 1984 made headlines around the world” (Transition Online [TOL) 2.6.2006). Investigators of the Secret Police archive evaluate that approximately 10% of all clergymen collaborated in some measure with the Secret Police. Higher percentages than in Poland, are believed to reflect the collaboration among the Hungarian and Czechoslovakian priests. Aware of the imminent crisis, the Catholic Church of Poland publicly acknowledged in 2006 that some of its clergy collaborated with the Communist authorities and a few months later published on behalf of the priests a request for forgiveness for their past sins. From the perspective of the perception of a new symbolic order such as in the case of the office of the Presidency, Romania stood out as being at a disadvantage in comparison to other former communist countries. If the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria all benefited immediately after the change of regimes from the leadership of former notable dissidents or political opponents (Havel, Walesa, Arpad, and Jhelev, respectively), Iliescu of Romania was perceived not only as a nonintellectual, but as a former associate of the previous regime. The fact that he held key party positions in the 1960s and 1970s contributed to the sense that “nothing has changed” and that no new faces came to power. In countries such as the Czech Republic and Hungary, the legislatures passed a law (the law of lustration) forbidding former active members of the defunct communist parties to fill important positions in both the State and public sector, while the Polish Senate decided in the summer of 1991 that every member of the Sziem (the Polish parliament) would have his or her past reviewed. Such legislation helped to ensure more favorable perceptions with regard to the symbolic transition to the new order. Legislation as a formal mechanism that ensures that the new and promising order is defended from pollution by the previous one and that its embodied archetypes cannot vitiate the new and clean sociopolitical regime, is still only one genre of action among others, that when taken together may affect a new perception of reality. Whether 99

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this reality is perceived as new depends on a consciousness that distinguishes between two radically different orders. For the difference to be recognized at the level of consciousness necessarily requires a transformation from the experiential to the symbolic plane. A transformation at the symbolic level means a perception that defilement has been eradicated. However, even among the citizens of those countries where specific legislation was passed, there remained a persistent discontent that the newly reformed justice systems did little to control economic abuses of former heads of state enterprises who succeeded in transferring money or goods from these sources into their pockets. Many of these former party bosses, especially former security officers, took advantage of past connections and information in their possession in order to set up new private enterprises and thus became millionaires overnight. Again, in Romania the situation was more acute and more bewildering than in other former communist countries, since in the background was a strong and incessant national search for a valid and viable explanation of who planned, directed, and led the revolution against Ceaucescu. A persistent version of the events argued that high-ranking officers of the Securitate conspired against Ceaucescu; a similar speculation was popular also among East Germans concerning the role of the Stasi’s officers in toppling the East German regime. Many Romanians strongly believed that the Securitate masterminded the series of events that eventually led to the overthrow of the tyrant’s regime and therefore it should be credited for “removal of the curse”; although the Securitate officers are hardly perceived as being heroes, some refer to them with some degree of leniency when it comes to their new activity in the economy, for example. The Dismissal of Directors of Enterprises Among the rituals of political purification I have included the deposition of State incumbents, directors of various companies and enterprises and governmental agencies. In most cases these directors, especially those who oversaw national enterprises, were political appointees rewarded for loyalty by the party; a few of these directors, however, were technocrats with party clearance. After the revolutions, the enterprises’ employees organized ad hoc in many of them independent labor groups, or sometimes newly elected representatives initiated meetings during which the competence of the director, as well as abuses, if any, committed by him while under 100

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patronage of the communist party were publicly debated for the first time. Some of the more reform-minded young people tended to complain that their work colleagues did not understand the real necessity for changes at all levels as the only means of eradicating the entrenched “authoritarian-centralist mentality.” Many of the young, nonpolitical technocrats were especially exasperated with their older compatriots who, in their anxiety over the many radical changes taking place at higher levels of sociopolitical and economic institutions, neglected to see the importance of changes in their microworld, especially at work where new people whose outlook was more democratic and innovative should take charge. Typical of such arguments is the story related to me by an architect in the Romanian city of Piatra-Neamtz who was working in a governmental regional urban planning institute. His “director” (the Head of the State enterprise), an architect appointed by the party, was considered a reasonable manager during the past regime (meaning he was able to get along with party officials and hence protect his subordinates), but was also judged to be a nonimaginative architect who had turned out mostly Stalinist housing complexes. At the employees’ meeting two months after the revolution, most of them voiced the opinion that the director should not be dismissed, thereby displeasing an apparent minority of innovative employees who claimed the director should be removed on professional grounds. Their argument was that he was not capable of producing anything different than what he had produced for the last thirty years. However, the majority thought that the director, though a political appointee, had defended them and secured perks for them during the communist reign and also that they had gotten accustomed to him. The young radicals of the employees then argued that for a few perks most of the employees had “sold their soul to the evil” and therefore it was no wonder that they were incapable of seeing that the director was incompetent; “it will take many years for these people to get rid of the old habits and judge incumbents and anything else in life with different criteria” summed up the architect. Eventually, the director was left in his old position, but the debate and its moral implications continued to linger, reverberating through all aspects of that institute’s activities while opening up a new way of judging moral behavior and professional leadership. The debated issues were so new for the employees, as well as for the political and civic culture of the country, that many people 101

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who attended such meetings reported confusion, an unknown fear of repercussions, concern for authority, and even possible anarchy in such a chaotic and emotional atmosphere. Similar debates also took place in hospitals, courts, and universities. In the first months after the revolution, the students of the universities of Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, former East Germany and, to a smaller extent elsewhere in East-Central Europe, challenged the professional competency of their professors; while the latter disputed each other’s professional capability and the extent of political involvement of each in relation to their promotion. The removal of directors all over East-Central Europe became an extremely sensitive issue, charged with emotions and arousing heated debates about the rectitude of communist state’s incumbents, especially in light of the fact that many directors “changed their coats” and with typical opportunistic servility became ardent supporters of the new regimes. Other directors resigned only after making profits on the black market and amassing fortunes from robbing properties of the enterprises of which they had been in charge. But the arguments of individuals did not always match those voiced publicly by the press or the new officials. One could hear some East-Central Europeans who defended the directors. The idea behind the defense was that some of the directors worked under adverse conditions that put a great deal of hardship on them; they operated under strenuous conflicting demands both from party bosses as well as their subordinates and many of them deserved credit for that. Others, especially the educated young, had more cynical views, and saw the resilient directors as exceptionally talented survivors whose main motives had been to increase their influence and benefits regardless of the nature of the regime under whose auspices they functioned, and therefore what they did had no bearing on the question of right or wrong. Even abuses and immoral acts, it was argued, could be justified by the supreme imperative of surviving, in a system where survival was the sole and dominant motivation. The fate of the directors, especially those from small and middle size enterprises, as judged and debated by the media, courts, and private individuals, was of particular importance in the emergence of a new political culture. After all, the directors were the ones who translated the Party’s principles and demands into daily work relationships, but at the same time, they were also the ones who frequently subverted those principles in order to adjust them to the needs and possibilities of the employees. In fact, the directors were those who often assisted 102

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the development of the black market and of the “second economy” mostly from personal motives, and they were in the position to negotiate the pressures from above and from below. Trials of the Former Leadership in Romania The spectacle of the trial of the Romanian Securitate officers, as well as of the three top aides of Ceaucescu (Bobu, Postalnicu and Dinca) in 1990, who appeared in court dressed in striped prison clothing and shaven heads, was the first in a series of political trials, some of them notionally televised, some not, but all heavily covered by media and intensely followed by the entire country. Every evening for few months, national television broadcast the trials of both the secret police top officers and of the dictators’ aides. These were days when the entire country watched the televised trials, commented on them, and fiercely debated their significance. It was a time of atonement: in front of television late into the night and in the course of the following days, people discussed, argued, and also reminisced with others about their own experience. They debated the social, moral, and spiritual issues implied while also quietly repenting over their own “private sins.” After the trial of Ceaucescu’s top aides and security chiefs came the trial of Nicu Ceaucescu—the controversial son of the late dictator. The trial was, like the others, broadcast by governmental television and triggered endless public debates and press commentaries. Nicu Ceaucescu was a despised and feared public figure, to whom a long list of draconian deeds was attributed, from cruel rapes to irresponsible driving behavior that caused grave car accidents and frivolous decisions taken while drunk, thus affecting the lives of many. For Romanians, the notorious defendant was a living symbol of the former system, a corrupt political regime that was based on nepotism, which treated the members of the dictator’s family as having greater privileges than ordinary people, while not holding them accountable for abuses. Nicu Ceaucescu became, in addition, a unique symbol of immorality because he was assumed to have been the figure responsible for the emotional crisis and aborted career of Nadia Comaneci the acclaimed young athlete who herself became a recognized symbol of Romania throughout the world. Comaneci allegedly gave up a promising career and attempted to commit suicide after an imposed affair with the son of the dictator. Thus, ironically, Nicu Ceaucescu himself fell victim to the mythological formula of the beast preying on the virgin. 103

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The trial was closely followed by the Romanians and broadly commented on by the press. During the televised sessions of the court, the major institutions of the previous regime and various incumbents came under scrutiny, especially the army. If the Securitate was the symbol of the communist regime, the army had the aura of being a political, albeit, the most authentic national institution. In the days of the revolution and beyond, the feeling of many was, that the army had played a dubious, if not a collaborative role, with the Securitate. Its real role seemed clouded and often mysterious, especially since the Defense Minister in Ceaucescu’s government, General Milea, apparently committed suicide during the first days of the rioting in Timisoara. Nicu Ceaucescu’s trial became the national purgatory, raising questions and demanding remorse about a great number of national issues that had not yet been publicly debated. After Nicu Ceaucescu’s trial in 1990, many people felt that the main accusations that should have been raised by the prosecutor, had not been dealt with, that the judges were too inexperienced and that in fact many others should have been tried along with the defendant, among whom several still held State positions. It was as though a state of saturation had been reached, because of the ineptitude of the judicial system. However, shortly after two new trials commenced, one of which sentenced members of the former Politburo for having approved Ceaucescu’s order to use force in order to put down the demonstrations in Timisoara and in Bucharest. Two out of the sixteen defendants drew sentences of five and a half years, which evoked many cynical commentaries, in the press, as well as everywhere else. The second trial was that of General Vlad Julian, the former Chief of the Securitate who was sentenced to nine years imprisonment after a nine-month trial. Trials of Leaders in Other Former Communist Countries That Romania had more public trials that were more visible than in any of the other East-Central European countries, can be explained by the fact that prior to December 1989 it had the most oppressive regime, and consequently it was the only country where a bloody revolution took place. Other East-Central European countries had less visible trials and a heated debate was set in motion as to whether to bring to trial such leaders as Jivkov of Bulgaria, Honecker of East Germany, Jakes of former Czechoslovakia, and Jaruselsky of Poland. 104

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Trials are staged with the purpose of dealing with human conflict, to be resolved by justice. These are culturally controlled events intended to capture attention, to focus emotions, and to leave lasting impressions, as are all rituals. Furthermore, trials display an essential characteristic that turn them into public rituals, that is, they are elaborately enacted. Culturally, trials are enactments of moral confrontations between adverse forces represented by real individuals, upon which is invoked the capacity to do justice, whose significance is to discover the wrongdoing. They are staged as such, so as to unfold a drama that reaches its peak in the given verdicts: had the suspect been found to bear the guilt of transgression from purity to impurity or not… In February 1992, the Parliament of Poland passed a decision stating that the 1981 Martial Law Declaration was unlawful, making it possible to bring Jaruselsky to trial. While many would have liked to see him accused of human rights abuses and even of betrayal, Jaruselsky enjoyed a certain popularity, because of the claim that had he not declared Martial Law, Poland would have been invaded by Soviet troops, exactly as happened in Czechoslovakia in 1968. This argument seemed to have many supporters, particularly in light of the disillusionment with the policies of his successor, Walesa. Most interesting is the fact that among those who refrained from joining the campaign against the general, were such personalities as Adam Michnik and Wladislav Persionink. The reasons that these two former dissidents, who were imprisoned by the regime of Jaruselsky during 1981 did not demand that Jaruselsky be brought to court, is that they believed the government of Walesa was using the Jaruselsky case to divert public attention from its own difficulties. In the former Czechoslovakia, there were continuous attempts to bring to trial three 1968 Politburo leaders who signed the invitation to bring in the Warsaw Pact troops, thus extinguishing the short-lived peaceful rebellion of the Spring of Prague, Dubcheck the General Secretary of the Czechoslovakia Communist party in 1968, became to the delight of many the head of the first post-1989 Parliament. Shortly after the fall of the GDR, Erich Honecker was given refuge in the home of a Protestant minister, an event which in itself sparked a passionate moral debate. Many people angrily disagreed with the “good Christian deed,” demanding a trial in spite of everything. Honecker fled to the USSR and at first was given refuge by the Gorbachev regime. After the collapse of USSR, the Russian government wanted to expel Honecker who by now was formally requested by the German 105

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government under heavy pressure of public opinion. Under threat of expulsion, the former communist leader took refuge in the Chilean Embassy in Moscow which eventually delivered him to the Germans in August of 1992. Eventually Erich Honecker was brought to trial but after a few weeks the trial was abandoned on the grounds of his poor health. He then flew to Chile where he passed away. Erich Honecker became the symbol of oppression of the former GDR and to many Germans it seemed that until this man was tried and the victims of the former regime vindicated, East Germans could not regard their new political life as “business as usual.” Three former East German soldiers who were guards on the Berlin Wall during the last years of the communist regime, and who had killed a young man who had attempted to escape, were brought to trial and judged. The West German judges argued that the three soldiers should not have obeyed their superiors’ orders to kill innocent people and the one who actually pulled the trigger was given three years imprisonment while his accomplices were acquitted. The defense argued that all of them should be acquitted since the responsibility for the killing lay with the political authorities who gave orders to shoot people attempting to escape from the GDR. The trial which took place in Germany in 1990–1991 fed a lively public debate. For many, the trials were seen as a necessary minimal effort to instigate a national healing process in East Germany, targeted to the establishment of new standards of morality, especially after living for more than a half a century under either a right- or left-wing dictatorship. After acknowledging the existence of a “culture of denunciation” among East Germans, Joachim Gauck, a leader of the East German revolution and then in charge of the Stasi archives, pressed for a process of national expiation. Referring to the process of denazification undergone by West German society, he reflected: Consider what the Federal Republic’s society got as a result of closing off this subject so soon. Remember the fury of the sons and daughters who were at universities and the streets in 1968. We see again and again that repressed conflict and internalized suffering will reappear unannounced in later times in crises. We do not want to make the mistake of repeating the German past. (Time, February 3, 1992)

East German public opinion was especially keen to observe the bringing to trial of those who were leaders in the former GDR. The unification forced the East Germans to reflect upon the hypocrisy of 106

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leaders of totalitarian political systems; they seem to be more adamant in demanding that the German judicial system punish former East German leaders. Hence, a series of political trials took place during 1992. In most of the cases the charges were corruption and abuse. Such were the charges against Harry Tisch who was sentenced to eighteen months in prison; the former politburo member and the head of state labor union was one of East Germany’s most powerful officials. Charges of falsifying the 1989 election results were pressed against Hans Mudrow who was the last East German Prime Minister and Egon Krantz, who for a few weeks became the prime minister after Honecker left East Germany. Similarly, Hans Berghoffer, the former mayor of Dresden was charged with corruption and falsification of elections. In 1997, Egon Krantz, was sentenced with prison after a long trial, he was accused for the death of a citizen attempting to escape to West Germany. Jivkov of Bulgaria had, for almost a year, been under house arrest. In the frequent demonstrations that took place during the autumn months of 1990 in Sofia many clamored to have Jivkov indict as a sign that the present government of communists-turned-socialists had the genuine intention of purifying the system. Eventually, Jivkov was brought to court in late February 1991 and charged with embezzling the equivalent of 4 million dollars in state funds during his thirty-five years of ruling Bulgaria. In Albania, under heavy pressure from the opposition a few weeks after the overthrow of the communist regime, the widow of the former dictator Nadyima Hoxha, 71 and Rita Marco, a politburo member, were charged with “corruption and grave abuse.” The announcement of the arrest was transmitted to the opposition leader by the prime minister in a dramatic televised broadcast. Much of the immediate aftermath of 1989 were events seen as organically connected with the Communist past. Thus, purifying the collective memory came to be the major public preoccupation, often taking precedence over the business of proceeding with the affairs of the day; this was especially the case in Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania, the three most oppressive states. In spite of these efforts to prove purification of previous institutions and their methods throughout all East-Central Europe, a popular suspicion persisted that not enough had been done to eradicate the “mentality,” the bureaucratic reflexes of abuses and corruption practiced by the present administrations; perhaps, it was suspected, these 107

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were using only more subtle expressions than those perpetrated by the Communist regime. Fierce political games with their unscrupulous manipulation of the past, as a tool of gaining present political popularity, posed a challenge to the process of purification. But that was inevitable. Reflecting on this state, Vaclav Havel, the president of the Czech Republic, bitterly observed little over a year after the November 1989 events, that the spirit of unity that helped topple the Communist regime has faded away: Today we are witnessing the decay of values on which our democratic revolution was based - values such as tolerance and understanding. We witness increasing rivalry, hostility and malice as well as the decay of moral principles. (Reported by CTK News Agency on February 9, 1991)

Enacting the End of a State of Consciousness The acts and events that I term rituals of purification, had above all a symbolic value associated with the will to cleanse the roots of a widespread social malignancy, a state of profanation. They propelled this impulse of purifying into the forefront of collective consciousness and from there to individual consciousness. The former incumbents even in their moments of public humiliation did not draw empathy but feelings of contempt and vindictiveness. They were viewed at the embodiment of malignancy and the iconography of defilement. While the rituals of purification concerning the secret police and its insidious actions, directed public awareness toward the machinery of evil, as embodied quintessentially in the institutions of the communist state, the trials of political personalities were aimed at the personification of evil. In both cases the concern was with instruments of the very same source that oppressed, abused, and corrupted. However, neither of the rituals should be viewed simplistically as public performances focused merely on punishing the guilty or taking revenge, though such a dimension accompanies all rituals of purification. The essence of these rituals is the attempt to symbolically enact the termination of an internalized state of consciousness within individuals. The assumption is that the internalization, whether passive or active, of the communist system was inherent to the process of adaptation to this regime, and that therefore the majority might have become potential instruments for perpetuating the oppressive sociopolitical order. 108

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Vaclav Havel aptly observed the “line” does not run clearly between “them and us,” but through each person. No one was simply a victim, everyone was in some measure co-responsible (Garton Ash 1998). From a symbolic perspective, everyone became a potential carrier of evil’s will, hence, the necessity of dramatic public trials during which evil is expiated. Consequently, a radical departure from the profane toward sacred was effected. These dramatic enactments were staged around a major case, a central archetype or an extraordinary example the moral of which projects onto individual cases, as well as their countless of variants. If the profanized character of social order during communism was explicitly defined by specific institutions and personified by particular individuals, the sacred signifier against which the profane state of affairs is contrasted appears to be a general entity called the Nation or the People. This entity was, in the years after 1989, re-contextualized within a set of values and principles mostly associated with the western ethos of democracy and human rights, as well as with what is believed vaguely to be Christian morality. Often, the profane nature of communist institutions and incumbents was contrasted, as has been already stated, with the aura of the known or unknown dissidents, with newly recognized martyrs and even with the recent mythology of the passive resistance of innocent citizens. The Axiological Metanarratives: Survivalists vs. Moralists There is a widespread argument among East-Central Europeans that the communist regimes of the past forty years were an aberration, contrary to the national character of these societies, and to a great degree a consequence of World War II, that was forcefully imposed upon them. Consequently the undisputable idea was that an alien, “unnatural” sociopolitical system grafted onto these societies succeeded in gradually transforming peaceful and moral nations into corrupted states. The argument is often couched in emotional metaphorical language such as “this country was once a beautiful land populated with proud and industrious people” while now “the land is ugly and the people degraded.” Moreover, this survivalist argument, prevalent among many EastCentral Europeans, insists that along the way, people forced to survive surrendered to the system, i.e., they became corrupted and through no fault of their own became part of it. Some people were even zealously supportive, but they are believed to have been the worst since they 109

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not only became debased and corrupted, but actively contributed to the system by corrupting others. Among intellectuals, young radical students, and idealists of all types (called here for convenience “moralists”), the prevalent idea was that the system could not exist without some kind of moral deterioration on the part of the masses. A Romanian high-school teacher succinctly articulated what was in the mind of many others: “we have all sinned” he stated. Also in a letter to the editor of the Bulgarian opposition newspaper “Dialog,” one of the readers wrote, after learning that the opposition leader Peter Beron had worked as an informer for the secret police: “Somehow we were all informers.” (Der Spiegel, December 1990). Related to the prevalent idea of a system that had morally infected the otherwise good and decent people, one can hear many speculations concerning how spread out the moral defilement was, who was more affected, and who managed to avoid “contagion.” There was an intense undercurrent debate with regard to the degree of moral damage inflicted upon certain groups and specific individuals, especially those who placed themselves in the limelight. Within the ongoing debate, the issue whether the youth were “contaminated” or whether they were remediable, was a major one. For many adults the youth “cleansed” themselves during the revolutions, while for others, only a relatively small number of highly educated people courageously carried their cause until its fruition. How these young people grew up morally clean and politically conscious is a “mystery” to most adults and this has caused a great deal of speculation in the local magazines and newspapers. The “moralists” on the one hand and the “survivalists” on the other, formed two opposing camps who, in that particular part of the world, perhaps for the first time in many years publicly voiced two different conceptions, that had implications far beyond specific persons or even beyond the specific present sociopolitical circumstances. That is to say, the question as to whether or not the goals of survival justified the immoral means, seemed to penetrate the post-revolution collective ethic for the first time. The entire issue of national moral behavior under the communist regime should be theoretically perceived in terms of types of “accounts” (Scott and Lyman 1970) provided by the various apologists, or ideological groups. Hence the “moralists” blamed human moral weakness in the face of adverse social conditions, while the 110

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“survivalists” advanced an excuse, that people were the victims of the unfavorable relationship existing between individuals and the State that only temporarily degraded individuals to the point of immoral and corrupt behavior. The idea of the corruptibility of men confronting vitiating historical circumstances, as put forth by the moralists, on the one hand, or the notion of the temporary nature of immoral behavior as a compromise for the sake of survival, as articulated by the survivalists on the other, represent two competing axiological approaches to be reckoned within East-Central Europe. The first blames human nature and society’s perverting forces, while the latter puts forth an excuse on behalf of human feebleness. The former refuses to bestow absolution for sins that could have been avoided, while the latter offers forgiveness out of pragmatic considerations, giving weight to the adverse circumstances mitigating immoral behavior. The axiological arguments with their derivatives form a metanarrative referred to in or guided by the innumerable public debates and stories brought to light by the newly expanding press. These also found their way into the everyday language of ordinary individuals who tried to make sense of and to comment on the events swirling round them. The axiological debate between moralists and survivalists filtered down and most often took the form of cultural stories diffused either by the media or by rumors, the contemporary narrative genre typical of East-Central Europe. Both the moralists and the survivalists put forward their arguments by producing compatible narratives, mythologies, symbols, iconographies, metaphors, etc. Thus, among the popular excuses enthusiastically invoked by the survivalists were those narratives centered on insanity of the villain dictators. One could often hear the Romanians argue that Ceaucescu was a “crazy man,” and even the press referred to him as a madman suffering from paranoia, self-aggrandizement, delusions and, of course pathological cruelty. For instance, a typical and prevalent story circulating in the country related that Ceaucescu used to demand that babies be brought to him, from whom his physician would make a transfusion of blood to the dictator in order to keep him healthy and young. The unspoken corollary of this argument is that few, if any, could have survived and remained morally independent in a society functioning in the image of its insane leader, let alone challenge him. Similar arguments with different derivatives that border on fantasy and wishful thinking could be heard in every East-Central 111

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European countries. One might hear Bulgarians claiming that Jivkov suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, or meet Hungarians who knew for certain that Kadar had been senile for a long time. As far as the argumentation of moralists went, this could not have been better articulated than in the statement of a forty-five-yearold chemical engineer who said to me in the summer of 1991 that “the regime of Ceaucescu was a long period of painful adaptation of the population to very difficult living conditions that unfortunately reached a degree of debasement and cowardice.” Consistent with their theoretical position, the moralists advanced narratives in various media that centered on the communist leaders and their collaborators as morally destitute men lacking scruples. Concomitantly, they brought to light stories of heroes, those who stood up for their moral principles, or those who were communists and repented, acknowledging their sins and showing remorse for what they did. Typical of these narratives was a television series broadcast in Romania during the summer and fall of 1991 and 1992 about political prisoners, i.e., those imprisoned by the communist regime shortly after 1945. A similar series was also aired on Bulgarian television at the same time. The series depicts the biographical and political background of the detainees, the communist prisons and camps where victims of torture spent many years in subhuman conditions and which many did not survive. The programs showed the absurd accusations, the falsification of facts, the hypocrisy of the judges, and the zealousness of the guardians. Central to the television series in Romania were interviews with two former Interior Ministers, Draghici and Nicholsky, who were at that time chiefly responsible for the imprisonment of political defendants. The two minimized their responsibility and repented for a few misunderstandings. Draghici and Nicholsky were not portrayed as victims of ideology, but rather as the embodiment of the ideology which they implemented both brutally and zealously. As injustices of the past surfaced and were enthusiastically publicized by the moralists, the story of forced labor camps for political prisoners also became a moral narrative in which the depth of ideas was sacrificed for the sake of imagery, life drama, and powerful metaphors. In Romania, the two major leading newspapers of the moralists, at that time, “Romania Libera” and the weekly “22” devoted a large part of their space to stories and debates about the various issues touching on the moral dilemma between acceding to the corrupt communist 112

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system or finding the sources of strength to oppose it. Romania Libera ran a series of stories entitled “The Trial of Communism” in which the editor brought to light stories of people who were killed by the Securitate or of others who were persecuted by the authorities. The stories, in other words, were selected to indicate individual incumbents’ moral degradation and/or the heroic behavior of the few. Such for instance, was the story of G. Ursu, an engineer with literary interests who had kept a life-long journal (Romania Libera, November 19, 1990) in which he also commented about politics and cultural events. His journal was stolen from his office by two women colleagues—at first out of curiosity—but once its political contents were read they handed it over to the authorities, for fear of being accused at some point of knowing of its existence. The author underwent a series of dreadful interrogations which led to his death. At the end of the article the author asked the same question that so many other people were asking “why has the Securitate officer in charge of the case who is alive and well not yet been brought to trial and so too the State prosecutor who accused the defendant without basing himself on facts, as well as the two women who brought the journal to the authorities.” The weekly “22” regularly published stories about the behavior of various personalities under communist tyranny. Illustratively typical was an article about the Romanian philosopher Mircea Vulcanescu who was imprisoned three years after the communist regime took over and who died in prison (“22”, September 1991). The author of the article, a former political inmate himself who became a close friend of Vulcanescu in prison, reminisced about the time he had spent together with the renowned philosopher and other intellectuals, who seemingly because of their political activity prior to the war among the rightwing parties, were persecuted and imprisoned after the communists came to power. While the title of the article “Do Not Avenge Us” is a quotation from one of the last meetings between the author and Vulcanescu, the end of the article cites the Gospel of John, stating that there is no greater love than that of sacrifice for one’s friends. The ambiguous entity called “the masses” became one of the central, manipulable notions, advanced both by survivalists as well as by moralists, in the ensuing moral debate (Report on Eastern Europe on Romania, Radio Free Press, 1990). The prevalent usage of the concept of masses and its negative derivatives, such as crowds, mobs, throngs and, to a certain extent, the notion of public opinion in the popular discourse of the moral debate is worth a comment. In a sense it became 113

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convenient to employ the concept of masses as an irrational entity that excludes, of course, critical and self-reflexive elements and as such can put forward both a tenable excuse as well as an all-inclusive condemnation. However, the very rupture attributed to the weak moral functioning of society in certain circumstances, should be viewed as helpful in facilitating the process of purification. It is justified, as argued by Durkheim, that individuals look upon a collective as being sacred. However, in this specific case when linguistic derivates of the concept of society were assigned negative connotations, as the post-communist local media discourse suggested, this is an indication of a state of anomie, or rupture between individuals and the collective. The discourse shared both by moralists and survivalists in the East-Central European mass media attempted to persuade that the roots of immorality are the manipulable, irrational masses. The predominant negative terms used in depicting Society, suggest, in Durkheim’s terms, a profanization of the sacred. The profanization of the sacred collective as it came to be linguistically expressed in the media is only a means for equipping the general consciousness with a new map of categories of the sacred and the profane. A comparison of popular media discourses involving terms derivative of society prior to the revolutions and after, can provide a perspective into the semantic transformations such terms underwent in East-Central Europe and especially in Romania and Bulgaria thus, schematizing the location of sacred and profane. Prior to the revolutions the term “masses” was a euphemism in the propagandistic jargon of the communist regimes implying the voiceless, manipulated state employees. Often the term “masses” was employed by the state-controlled media for events orchestrated by the Party, such as political demonstrations in support of its projects, or parades and celebrations. The masses were considered a monolithic entity transformed by the communist cause from selfish individuals into a force united by a similar consciousness and motivated by the creeds and values put forward by the Party, that had as their goal the betterment of the Nation. Party, Country, State, Nation, Masses—all once signified the sacred, while the profane referred to whatever western countries signified (Bar-Haim 1988). Seldom were the positive, supportive masses contrasted to individuals who subverted the regime, since political dissent could not be acknowledged. In other times the allusion was directed against black marketeers and “economical saboteurs.” Though, from 114

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time to time, the official media used the term “hooligans” for any civic disobedience. During the revolutions and in their immediate wake, the new sacred term that gained currency was “the People”; it was the People “who made the revolution.” Very often the specific people were the Youth, the “heroes,” who were bestowed with sacredness. During those months, when hostile factionalism began to creep in, and each political faction or even a mere association of angry men claimed to possess national virtue, it was only natural that the new negative collective derivatives surfaced. This was particularly accelerated by menacing, often violent street demonstrations and counter demonstrations. It was at this time that the “violent mob,” the “frightening crowds,” the “irrational masses,” the “manipulated hordes,” the “unleashed throngs,” and other connotative expressions penetrated the popular discourse but not without the confirmatory legitimization of the newly engaged media. The acts of purification were thus underpinned by cultural codes specifying the sacred and the profane (Smith 1991). The cultural specification of sacred and profane transpired also through the rich connotative use of concepts referring to society in both media commentaries and news description. Rituals of purification are first of all attempts at orientation in times of moral confusion and lack of helpful norms. They orient by facilitating a choice of competing interpretations through which to make sense of the unusual unsettled times that individuals of a certain historical period have experienced, such as the radical and sudden changes in East-Central Europe. In this latter case, the axiological positions put forward by the survivalists and moralists, respectively, were in the final analysis competing interpretations of a collective trauma that menaced the very identity and self-image of that society. Ultimately these interpretations were based on competing conceptions of Society, its relation to individuals and above all, the weaknesses and strengths of a certain collective in extraordinary times of hardship and tribulation. What has been described above is only one part of a vast array of events and acts that swept the entire region of East-Central Europe and which drew on energies, forced of a new consciousness, committed emotions, and imposed a new vocabulary. All this amounts to a coherent effort that took the structure of rituals whose purpose as a whole was to purify society from whatever and whomever was associ115

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ated with the communist order. Rituals were used as an opportunity to affirm a new perspective on collective morality, to revise old assumptions, revoke old symbols, evoke new ones, and reconsider everyday conventional conduct. At a deeper level, the overall result was the charting of a new map of social orientation desperately needed in such a period of radical change and sudden fundamental shifts that East-Central Europe underwent. References Alexander, J. C. 2006. The civil sphere. New York: Oxford University Press. Bar-Haim, G. 1996. Media charisma and the artificial global culture. In Globalization, communication, and transnational civil society, ed. S. Branien and A. Srebemy-Muhammadi, 141–57. Creskill, NJ: Hampton. Press. Baudrillard, J. 1983a. In the shadow of the silent majorities or the end of the social. New York: Semiotext(e). _____. 1983b. Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e). Bauman, Z. 1992. Intimations of postmodernity. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Croce, Benedetto. 1991. Per La Nuovo Vitta Dell’Italia. Scutti E Descorsi. Napoli 1944. Published in 22 in Romanian under the title: Epurarea Din Italia Dupa Fascism, January 24, 1991. CTK News Agency. 1991, February 9. Der Spiegel. 1990, December. Somehow we were all informers. Douglas, M. 1980. Purity and danger: An analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Durkheim, B. 1964. The division of labor in society. New York: Free Press. (Orig. pub. 1893.) Durkheim, Emile. 1965. The elementary forms of the religious life. New York: Free Press. (Orig. pub. 1912.) _____. 1972. Selected writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edles, L. D. 1998. Symbol and ritual in the New Spain: The transition to democracy after Franco. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elster, Jon, Claus Offe, and Ulrich Klaus Preuss. 1997. Institutional design in post communist societies: Rebuilding the ship at sea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Garton, Ash T. 1998. The truth about dictatorship. New York Review of Books, February 19, 35–40. Gergen, J. K. 1991. The saturated self. New York: Basic Books. Haaretz. 2002. Special issue on remembering and repentance. March 27. Hilbert, R. 1986. Anomie and the moral regulation of society. Sociological Theory 4: 1–19. Lefebvre, H. 1968. Everyday life in the modern world. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Martin, B. 1983. A sociology of contemporary cultural change. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Merton, R. 1968. Social theory and social structure. New York: Free Press. Mestrovic, S. G. 1985. Anomie and sin in Durkheim’s thought. Journal for the 116

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Scientific Study of Religion 24, no. 2: 119–236. Report on Eastern Europe on Romania. 1990. Radio free Europe, May 25, p. 37. Reuter-AP, in Winnipeg Free Press (1990), February 13. Ricoeur, Paul. 1967. The symbolism of evil. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Romania Libera. 1991. November 19. Scott, Marvin, and Layman Stanford. 1970. The sociology of absurd. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Siklova, Jirina. 1991. The gray zone and the future dissent in Czechoslovakia. Social Research 57, no. 2 (Summer): 347–63. Smith, Philip. 1991. Codes and conflict. Toward a theory of war as ritual. Theory and Society 20: 103–38. Transition Online: Love and Dread, 2.6.06. Totok, W. 1992. Rolul Mediilo de informare [The role of information media] Revista 22 (August): 7–13. Tudoran, D. 1992. Viata Politica Romineasca: Mass Media in Perioada de Tranzitie [The Romanian Political Life: Mass Media in the Transition Period]. Revista 22 (August): 7–13.

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Part III The Empowered Public Sphere

6 The Exposure of Private Sphere to Public Moralities and the Conditions Favoring Conformism A Brief Critique and the Imbalance between the Two Spheres Within social theory there is a legitimate interest, in examining the public/private dichotomy. The examination is undertaken either as a subject in its own right as did Arendt (1958), Sennett (1993, first published in 1977), Habermas (1991, first published in German in 1962) or as part of theoretical explorations of other major sociological issues, such as modernization (Berger 1974), Western culture (Lash 1979), secularization and religion (Casanova 1994), to mention just a few influential works. Such an examination surges in certain periods and subsides in others. The attention given by social theory to the public/private division emerges from its centrality in capturing a cluster of major issues such as macro and micro levels of society and the reciprocal dynamics between them; the complexity of social change; the role of agency, raises queries about morality and culture; the production of solidarity and more (Calhoun 1994). The bulk of the studies mentioned involve an analysis of the public sphere (space, realm, domain, life) and to a considerably lesser extent the private sphere. Furthermore, the public sphere is mainly viewed by these scholars as a political entity, and perceived through its sociohistorical dimensions. This perception also dictates the approach: most of the studies concerning the issue of public/ private treat it from the perspective of political theory or political philosophy (Cowen 2006). Habermas’ work is the quintessential example, but all the studies inspired by him are similar in this respect (Calhoun 1994). 121

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Concentrating on political categories such as nationalism, the bourgeoisie, liberalism, state ideology, political rights, and the like, not only limits the referential universe but also portrays an abstract world without subjects, populated by homogenous social groups who are always politically active and seemingly aware of their historical role. Such a picture of social life governed by unambiguous constructions, but without the cultural voice of individuals who interpret these artifices or make them up, is an incomplete reality. Privacy and publicness are above all categories of human experience, yet as such they are mostly absent from the scholarly analyses of this fundamental social dichotomy. Only infrequently do a few cultural analyses appear to illuminate how individuals interpret the two categories and relate to them in their daily experience (Handelman 1980). Focusing on political entities such as the State, especially, results in the fallacy of separating it from Society and thus bestowing upon it a permanent ontological independence; Habermas even confronted these two concepts in order to support his neo-Marxist conception. If Durkheim’s perception of society as an all-encompassing social entity is by now accepted as a canonic definition, then to separate even, analytically, State from Society is not only erroneous but also is a disservice to the effort of understanding the socially specific character of the public sphere. Public life is incomprehensible without the embodiment of the public category into specific loci, that enable specific activities, entail certain types of interaction and produce certain experiences. Thus, the question is what is the quintessential embodiment of public sphere: the street and the highway, the commercial centers, the work organizations, the governmental offices, the football stadiums, the mass media… Is it one of these more than the other, or are all of them public loci in the public sphere? Anthropologically, these places are so different from one another in so many dimensions, that we may speak of many kinds of public sphere; and if not, then what is the common denominator of all these settings that can capture the distinctive essence of them all? Whatever the definition that may be given to encompass all public settings, it is taken for granted that the fertile context for all of them is the city. The city is not only the meeting place of the public and private, of the traditional, modern, and late-modern sphere, but it also vividly encapsulates the contradictions and challenges of contemporary 122

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society itself. It is an understatement that the drama of the present social is played out on the “city stage.” The contradictions and the difficulties of contemporary society also encompass the interrelations of public/private dichotomy. Social processes that Western society underwent have left the balance between the two spheres visibly disturbed. The equilibrium of power and authority between the two spheres changes constantly but not necessarily symmetrically nor harmoniously. However, from time to time the imbalance is disturbing and its implications are considered to be detrimental. It is perhaps not by chance that during the 1970s, the reflective years following the stormy 1960s, few major influential works in social theory engaged in either direct or indirect analysis of the adverse implications of this perceived imbalance. The Homeless Mind, Modernization and Consciousness by Berger (1974) is an examination of the process of modernization and its institutions. The authors posit asymmetrical relations between the two spheres, i.e., while public life has become over-institutionalized, private life has become deinstitutionalized. The hidden assumption is that one should be cautious with institutions and certainly with overinstitutionalization of public life. At the same time, lack of institutions in the private life of modern individuals, is no less a problem than an excess of institutions. One of Sennett’s major argument in The Fall of Public Man (1993) is that the delicate balance between the two spheres has been eroded: “when the self came to define social relations, becoming a social principle, the public realm began to wither” (339). Sennett is primarily concerned with the public sphere but his assumption is that a strong, interpersonal public space that supports strong civility and sociality, also has positive repercussions on the private sphere. In two popular works, The Culture of Narcissism (1979a) and Haven in Heartless World: The Family Besieged (1979b), Lasch examines the milieu of privacy in light of expansive public agencies. The helping professions, according to Lasch (1979b) are trained to support the family in all its functions. The result is the subversion of the family’s autonomy and of the independence of its members. Generally speaking, the weak position of the family enables the state to intervene in family life. These remarkable works used the argument of the imbalanced relationship between the two spheres to critique Western culture and to evaluate its menacing implications. 123

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Following Berger’s statement that the contemporary public sphere is over-institutionalized, while the private one is deinstitutionalized, the purpose of this chapter is to briefly discuss several implications of the imbalance between the two realms. I argue that as a result of the imbalance between the two spheres, the character of each of the two realms has been and continues to be altered: one becomes a privatizedpublic sphere, while the other becomes a publicized-private one. A major implication of the privatized-public sphere is the growing public concern with individual’s psychological needs. In this chapter, I briefly note the centrality of psychotherapy to the contemporary public sphere in light of the changes this sphere has undergone. Furthermore, I argue that as a result of the imbalance, over-institutionalization of public sphere becomes a fertile environment for the empowerment of public moralities. That is, public moralities take a major role in influencing both spheres, but especially, and this is the focus of this chapter, the weak private spheres. Hence, two brief discussions are developed: one on the contemporary family, as the central institution of the private life and the other on the individual’s private body, as a major component of private life but increasingly “publicized” by the public services. It is argued, that the contemporary family reacts to pressures from moralities by becoming overly normative; as far as individual’s private body, it is argued that the perception of one’s own body image is strongly influenced by ideals of public moralities. Ultimately, I contend that intensive exposure to over-institutionalization of public moralities might result in a fertile ground of self-imposed conformism. In this chapter, I preferred to touch upon several relevant factors, especially, on those that belong to the broad sociohistorical processes of modernization, rather than concentration on only one or two of them, thus gaining a larger perspective. Interconnected factors pieced together reveal a picture that indicates the weakness of private sphere and the central role of public moralities in influencing its character and orientation. The Transference of Functions: The Over-Institutionalized and Deinstitutionalized Spheres Changes in the nature of each sphere have been the result of an ongoing sociohistorical process of transference of functions from the private to the public realm. The outcome of this process has been a growing public sphere and a shrinking private one. Furthermore, as 124

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I have already argued the public sphere, has become “a privatizedpublic space,” while the private sphere has reciprocally been permeated by public moralities and their cultural discourses. The forces that are at play affecting the relations between private and public spheres, in the urban contemporary Western context, have to do with the changes in the contexts of family, work, religion, community, political, and other institutions. It is generally accepted that the process of modernization in Western society, accounts for the changes that eventually also brought about the diminishing influence of the family as major institution of the private sphere. Modernization is regarded here in the sense of industrialization, urbanization, secularization, and the implications thereof (Thomson 1996). Within this frame of reference, the specific derivative processes that are directly relevant to the transformation of both private and public spheres are: the rise of the urban middle class, the mass entrance of women into the working force, and the increased centrality of the education as a mobility factor. The cumulative effect of these processes has led to profound changes in both the character of work, with its long periods of training and narrow specialization as well as on the nature of the modern family, and to reiterate, on its reduction in size and the shrinking of its functions. The effect these processes have had, for example, on women’s literacy and education may have changed mothers’ socialization outlooks as well as practices of involvement in their children’s education. Not only in traditional society, but also to some extent in early modern society, work and family were more harmoniously integrated than at present times, which are characterized by competitive and hostile relations. Consequently, changes in the institutions of work and family have been also eminently represented in the contemporary public and private spheres, respectively. As a consequence of these processes, the contemporary Western family has been reduced in size and has become limited in its functions. The family’s roles have thus become confined mainly to sexual reproduction, to some extent early socialization and emotional support (Coleman and Ganong 2004). Examining the issue from a historical perspective, Prost and Vincent succinctly concluded: “In fact family has ceased to be a powerful institution; its privatization has amounted to a deinstitutionalization.” (1991, 51). The transfer of tasks and activities, demands and expectations to other institutions that has characterized the modern family, has also effected a parallel conceptual transfer of functions, demands, and 125

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responsibilities from the general private sphere to the public one. This is what prompted Berger to observe that the public sphere has become overly institutionalized while the private sphere has emerged as deinstitutionalized (1974, 186). Habermas (1989) also succinctly captured the essence of the impoverishment of the family: “the family increasingly lost also the functions of upbringing and education, protection, care and guidance – indeed of transmission of elementary tradition and framework of orientation” (155). Lasch corroborates when he writes: “society in the guise of a ‘nurturing mother’ invaded the family, the stronghold of those private rights and took over many of its functions” (1979a, 18). To put it otherwise, various concerns and functions once belonging to the heart of the private sphere, have been transferred to the public sphere, such as mental problems, sexual difficulties, family conflict, educational choices, financial decisions, and spiritual tribulations. The transfer of functions from the family to professionals, that has entailed changes in both spheres, would not have been possible without the readiness of the public sphere to assume new responsibilities. This readiness was the result of those macro sociohistorical processes mentioned above, which radically changed all social institutions and prepared them for a new arrangement. The appropriation of functions by the public sphere has brought about new educational and professional disciplines and new fields of employment, such as the “helping professions.” With these, a new cultural discourse has emerged, which assists in making sense of the new division between the two realms. The new cultural discourse, in effect, has contributed to sanctioning the de-reifications of the chasm between the two. To understand the transformations in the public/private realms, one should first pay attention to the changes that occurred in the functions and tasks of social institutions. These changes affect the makeup of the two spheres as well as the relations between them. That is, changes within a social institution entailing the transferral of functions from one institution to another, have a direct resonance for the public and private spheres, since these functions are constitutive of the two realms. One may also assume that the functions transferred to the public sphere have undergone a metamorphosis into newly public organizations oriented to provide services according to what I would term as the ethics of individual well-being. Furthermore, these organizations 126

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claim moral legitimacy in the name of individual’s rights and welfare, that eventually is translated into psychological but also bodily and even spiritual support. Counseling agencies of all kinds, media, religious, and civic organizations, as well as educational institutions and law courts have all appropriated to themselves various functions of what once constituted private life. The same can be argued about organizations concerned with preventive medicine, educational health, alternative medical treatments, etc. Recent years have seen an upsurge of “soul services,” that is, spiritual-oriented occupations, such as spiritual teachers, healers, paranormal communicators, etc. Once the functions, tasks, and practices move from the private sphere to the public one, a process of professionalization is set in motion. Individuals engaged in or appointed in charge of the practices of the new public functions, undergo training in certain cognitive routines. Simultaneously, a normative and ethical code develops around these practices, and a political struggle for legitimacy inevitably arises. Gradually, the “dislocated” practices that have moved from the private to the public sphere are organized and canonized, and aspire to be recognized as legitimate occupations. Ideally, these occupations are perceived as indispensable. This process is sporadically accompanied by attempts to de-legitimize these occupations, but counter-attempts to mobilize science on the one hand, and law courts and politics on the other, enhances the support for the newly arrived professionals. When traditionally private needs are taken care of by public services, the result is an inexorable mix of bureaucratization and a great deal of pseudo-professionalism (Bledstein 1978). Ordinary individuals often experience a persistent sense of frustration, in seeking personal attention and sustainable support through standardized solutions. They are likely to sense a lack of control and to experience the gripping dependency on State welfare policy, politics, and bureaucracy. The transformation of private practices, that were once an integral part of family care, into autonomous occupational activities that provide new services, brings with it a disenchantment, an acute awareness of dangers and risks surrounding the individual’s life (Beck 1992). This is true as far as psychological practices are concerned, as well as those practices centered around body and the spirit. Paradoxically, the process leads to a strong dependency on these occupations and on their services, such as the case of the dominant therapeutic culture (Reiff 1987). 127

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The Dialectic Character of the Two Spheres The transformation of the two spheres is dialectical and should be perceived as such. The term “private sphere” has no meaning without the public one and vice versa. Each category refers not only to a certain type of activity in a certain defined space, but also implies their reciprocal effects and interrelations. If this were not so, one could be content with terms such as society, collectivity, state, to denote the public sphere, and concepts like personal individuality or subjectivity could replace the private sphere (Kumar 1997). A necessary distinction should also be made between personal and private. The personal is an individual construction, uniquely defined by each individual (each person) while privacy is an institutional construction, a socially circumvented space negotiated not by one individual but by a socioinstitutional order. It should be evident that privacy is a normative space, common to a plurality of people, though it concerns each individual, while a personal space is all about one person. Thus, any use of the binary private and public must be taken to imply the way in which the one defines the other. Any discussion on the subject should therefore always be grounded on the sociohistorical construction from which the meanings of both spaces derive. The selection and appropriation of functions, tasks, and practices is carried out from an array of social institutional functions, along the lines of the binary division, that is, these two opposing yet reciprocally defined spaces: private and public. The logic of this division assumes that the relationships, behaviors, and activities of the private sphere are characterized by such traits as trust, inward orientation closeness, intimacy, and familiarity, to name just a few, while the public is defined by the opposite traits: confidence, sociability, outward orientation, distancing, formality, and strangeness. This is a conceptual division that represents dual categories of fundamental human affairs. The two spheres are conceptually defined, yet socially constructed. Sociohistorical forces have constituted the contents of the two spheres, which are dichotomously divided according to the conceptual definition of two categories. The Privatized-Public Sphere: The Prominency of Psychological Solutions The ideas presented here do not differ from Sennett’s interpretation, who claims that secularization and capitalism destroyed the 128

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public realm (1993). When private expectations and psychological categories define public life, he argues, they bring about its liquidation. I would argue additionally that the processes of modernization have produced inevitable changes in both realms. The public sphere lost especially those functions, sources, and components related to politics and religion, but gained many others instead, notably those that once were subordinated to family, education, spirituality, and to some extent community. To claim that industrialization and secularization have destroyed the “public realm,” as Sennett argued (1993) may be true though it is an overstatement. For certain, the public realm has been transformed, yet more than anything its character displays an individualistic centered morality as well as a new civil Weltanschauung. The moral principles of late modernity that oriented the changes that Western institutions have undergone, and which have contributed to the redefinition of the public and private spheres, hinge on what I would term “ethics of the individual’s well being.” Historically, this ethics was advanced by the Enlightenment and has gained ground ever since, by focusing concern upon the individual and his state of being and measuring everything else against this value. The ethics are presently a central principle that control and organize public life, but also impose moral scrutiny and normative constraints upon the individual’s behavior. The ethics of the individual’s well-being have been instrumental in preparing the public sphere to take up new responsibilities, all which answer to the concerns and criteria of these ethics. Hence, the public sphere has been mobilized through the ethics’ principle to take upon itself the functions formerly fulfilled in the private sphere by the family. Not only has the public sphere acquired new functions, but its entire fabric seems now to conform to these new functions, especially those of providing psychological support. More than just taking over new responsibilities from the private sphere, it has made these new psychologically oriented responsibilities one of its major raisons d’etre. In other words, a large number of organizations, agencies, and associations that make up the public sphere are chiefly concerned with individual psychological needs and well-being. Local and state authorities administer psychological services to children, couples, and the elderly. They provide services to the unemployed, to the abused, the addicted, etc. Agencies of all kinds set up career improvement centers. Community Centers, churches, and volunteer associations are 129

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especially oriented toward giving counseling and support for almost any individual’s psychological problem (Wuthnow 1994). Furthermore, many workplaces organize workshops for their employees on a variety of topics such as psychological relaxation, stress management, cognitive training, as well as how to develop a relationship, heighten awareness, etc. Many employers organize de rigueur, workshops or lectures on such diverse subjects as: Eastern spiritual practices to promote self-growth, nurturing family ties, coaching for entrepreneurial aspirations, alongside Zen Buddhism and yoga. Concurrently there is a rise in the numbers and in the diversity of psychological-oriented professions. Transferring emotional care from the private sphere to the new services of public organizations has facilitated to a large extent the individual’s increasing pre-occupation with psychological needs. A new state of self-awareness, accompanied by intense self-scrutiny and a belief in the power of psychological understandings to challenge the limitations of contemporary living, have gradually become a matter of fact. Certainly, according to some social historians these processes were set in motion, as early as the late Middle Ages when individuals found themselves gradually pressed to live with a new state of self-awareness (Huizinga 1999). The transfer of emotional care from the private to public realms has greatly catalyzed the psychological dimension of life in late modernity. Psychological professionals and counseling agencies are perceived both in popular consciousness but also by the bureaucratic system as the ultimate solution to any individual’s problem. Individuals are referred to professionals as the most hopeful and effective resort. Parents are too readily persuaded by teachers, to consult a child psychologist if the kid is perceived as bored or overly active in the classroom; a single woman, at her friends’ suggestion, will seek psychological help if she did not marry after a long steady relationship; an elderly couple who keeps postponing the decision to move to an old age home is strongly advised by their neighbors to avail themselves to psychological counseling. Analyzing the increase of professional authority of psychologists, Illouz based the argument on Steven Brint’s contention that “Professional influence can be extensive when professionals are able to assert a central culture value in the absence of a strong counter-ideology.” She then observed that the 1960s represented an important step toward the depoliticization of the cultural arena because sexuality, 130

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self-development, and private life now occupied the centerstage of public discourse. According to Illouz, these categories “pushed aside the ‘older’ collectivist understanding and practice of politics and helped focus collective attention on personal well-being and sexuality” (2008, 161). Evidently, psychological categories have encroached into the realm of politics, but this has been unavoidable in light of the dominant ethics of the individual’s well-being. To posit that this trend has been detrimental is an ideological position. Sennett’s thesis is correct as long as he limits himself to describing reality, but erroneous when he attempts to explain it. The politics have changed not because of changes in the public sphere; the latter, rather, was transformed because of changes in politics, as is true with other institutions. I would even argue that politics have become more complex than before and that political public action has not disappeared but rather broadened its scope of concerns. Having undergone a radical “privatization,” the discourse of the public sphere accordingly addresses issues once associated with the private universe of an individual. A paradigmatic example is the issue of women’s fertility which has become an open topic of both private exchanges as well as a subject for public debates, especially concerning state support for expensive treatments. Another telling example, is the debate over liberal prescriptions of generic psychiatric medication such as Prozac, for problems like mild depression or social anxiety disorders. The Publicized Private Sphere: The Family as Custodian of Normativity Concomitantly, the private sphere is perceived to be a protective environment. It has retreated into a relatively controllable shell, yet it is not isolated, but on the contrary, the private sphere is overly susceptible to public life and therefore has been permeated by public moralities. Perhaps precisely because of the inherent danger of becoming weak of sociality, contemporary private life is readily anxious to comply with the precepts of public moralities. More than thirty years ago, Laslett (1973) conceived the new type of family as a both public and private institution. Of course, Laslett intended to say that the family had become too open to public forces. Lasch’s declamation of the retreat into isolation of “privatism,” argued that “private life takes on the very qualities of the anarchic social order 131

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from which it is supposed to provide a refuge” (1979b, 64). Habermas corroborated when he stated that families “retained only the illusion of an inner space of intensified privacy,” and he further asserted that the development of inner life “has started to dissolve into a sphere of pseudo-privacy” (1989, 157). The overall result has been a social vacuity of private life, that makes individuals paradoxically yearn for those socially promoted myths of stable family and intensive community life. The growing absence of social references in the private sphere prompted Giddens to lament that “personal life becomes attenuated and bereft of firm reference points, there is turning inward toward human subjectivity and meaning and stability are sought in the inner self ” (1990, 15). The inner life does not generate sociality, yet it is just because of that, individuals are in permanent search for dominant sources of social endorsements and hence overly exposed to public moralities and vulnerable to their effects. Consequently, in contemporary Western society, the two spheres have become increasingly blended in a certain way, rather than separated. This contention is based on the observation that certain modern social processes have attenuated the autonomous duality of the two spheres, with their opposing characteristics. The reason for this, as far as the private sphere is concerned, is linked to the argument that the private sphere is subsumed to the concerns and demands of the public one and specifically defenseless to the powerful public moralities. The factors underlying this condition are connected with the changes in the constitutive functions, tasks, and practices of social institutions that make up the two spheres. Functions may transfer from one institution to another, lose their centrality, or even disappear. The conceptual selection, appropriation, and articulation of these functions for each of the two spheres is also defined by the specific institutional repertoire of practices and their cultural perception. Ultimately, a particular configuration of the private and public spheres is sociohistorically constituted. To speak of the limited functions of the contemporary family is by now almost commonplace. Less discussed, however, is its fundamental orientation. I posit that the way family operates is by managing and servicing normativity. The idea behind this is that the overall orientation of the family, currently is to reduce, moderate, and manage antinormative factors that inherently plague society, as well as to maintain individual lifestyles within the range of normativity. 132

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The antinormative factors which the family is called upon to counter could, for example, stem from predicaments associated with the body, educational problems, developmental conflicts, career difficulties, emotional crises, etc. I argue that the family’s role in servicing normativity is the product of pressures from public moralities to control the relatively weak private sphere. Cultural discourses as vehicles of public moralities, attempt to manage and adjust family roles and the activities of its members (Lopez and Scott 2000). The family maintains normativity by mediating between family members and outside professionals or relevant agencies. Here lies the connection between the family as the major institution constitutive of the private sphere, to the general public life. The family’s encouragement and maintenance of normative lifestyles is carried out, for example, through support for normative gender education, such as boys being sent to learn judo and play football while girls attend classic and modern dance classes, or study the plastic arts. In orienting toward normative roles, fathers are whimsically forgiven for excessively watching sports on TV, while mothers are indulged for unduly spending time watching soap operas. An adolescent in the family is carefully questioned about whom he associates with at summer camp or to which movie he or she is going. One may retort by arguing that the family always had a normative goal. This may be true; the family by its role as the primary social agent had exercised pressures toward conformism. This characteristic, I contend, becomes more accentuated than before, considering the loss of instrumental family functions, chiefly, the economic, political, and educational ones. The concentration on the exclusive function of emotional support, presses the family to play its role, to aspire toward stability through all available means, to reconcile contradictions but without taking risks, to pacify anger—all adding up unwittingly to a fertile ground of promoting conformism. Ideally, the present family might subvert social structure while in reality it reproduces it. In our case coming from a weak structural position as an institution divested of functions and dispossessed of power, the family encourages adjustment and adaptability, rather than subversion, resistance, change, risks, etc. That is, there is not only an absence of resistance, but on the contrary there is a visible motivation to approve the existing social structure, concurring with its social categories and classifications. Some middle-class families display even an 133

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active social position, though in many cases that means to articulate criticism and express discontent. Yet, in spite of everything, there is an underlying compliance with public moralities and institutional practices, often on the premise of avoiding dismemberment and disruptions, an effort that ultimately amounts to a visible conformism. Under various suitable activities of the contemporary middle-class family lies a powerful culture of normalcy, a culture subsumed to the dominant sets of public moralities. To put it differently, public moralities enforce a definition of normal private life and within it a vision of a normal family life and the behavior of its members. The pressures to stay in line with the culturally defined perspective of normalcy, by a weak and constantly threatened family, have brought about also a certain conservatism. As Bauman, reflecting on the contemporary society argued succinctly: “survival on the contrary, is essentially conservative” and further up he explained why the status quo should be guarded: “Survival is about things not getting worse than before” (1995, 41). I would expect, as far as the middle-class family is concerned, that any dilemma brought to it as a choice, the conservative alternative will be opted in most cases. To Berger and Kellner, psychology functions to sustain the precarious marital world by assigning the status of “normalcy” to it (1980, 320–21). In other words, Berger and Kellner point out that psychology is used as an instrument of moral authority to control and legitimate the potentially chaotic marital relationships as part of, so much derived, normalcy. The use of public morality to legitimate the inevitable transformation of normativity into normalcy can be frequently observed, though not always in these terms. The emphasis, for example, on “family values,” or the “American way of life,” in the USA, legitimate a certain congruent perception of individual’s normalcy. Concerned with the increasing “enlargement of the realm of action” for psychologists, E. Illouz argued that psychologists “moved from neurotic misery to the idea that health and self-realization were synonymous. The effect of putting self-realization at the very center of models of selfhood was to make most lives become “un-self-realized” (2008, 161). In short, the core institution of the private sphere has turned into the most loyal custodian of the existing social order as Lash argued: “Family serves the social order” (1979b, 188). Often, under the guise of normalcy or of adaptability, it guards and controls against potential personal changes and deviations. Family has become an anxious and 134

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conformist agency, to a large extent because of its insecure position to face up to dominant public moralities. Such vulnerability would not have been possible had a structural balance between the two realms been in place. The weak private sphere cannot exist in isolation, nor can it muster the social energy to become an authoritative source of cultural commentaries with the power to influence the individual’s conduct. As far as the family members are concerned, John Mayer’s formulation about actors is aptly suitable: “The subjective qualities of actor (conform) to and (adopt) the larger cultural resources and prescriptions” (Mayer 1986, 43). This potentially dangerous conformism might be due to excessive exposure to, and uncritical acceptance of vigorous public moralities. Family no longer acts as a counterforce to perilous systems of ideas, nor to dangerous leadership that presents itself as a genuine and authentic public representative. At the same time, the family cannot afford to embrace experimental and new progressive alternative ideas, and again, uncritical acceptance may always lurk in the wings. The Body and Public Moralities Among the traditional family functions transferred, as part of the sociohistorical transformations we have described, to state agencies or public organizations, one can also identify those functions that concern the human body. Just as the individual’s psychological needs have been handed over to professionals in a variety of public agencies, the concerns of the body have been entrusted also into the hands of experts. The health professions are a good example of the new public group vested with power, that underwent internal professional differentiation and subsequently obtained total authority over the private body. The traditional medical professions have been expanded to new specialties and subspecialties; paramedical occupations and alternative medicine have also emerged. This process has, on the one hand created further dependency because of rising new expectations; on the other hand, losing sight of human totality and of the systemic functioning of the body, entails inexorable feelings of alienation and insignificance. The differentiation of the medical specialization and their professionalization, although positive in some respects, produces a negative institutional attitude toward the individual body (Cregan 2006). That is, the body ceases to be a private entity and becomes another public object to be serviced. Looking at the same phenomenon from a different point 135

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of view, Shilling (1993, 2) argued: “among its many effects, modernity has facilitated an increase in the degree of control that nation-states in general and medical professions in particular have been able to exert over the bodies of their citizens.” The process whereby professionals take charge of the body has resulted in a loss of control of individuals’ own bodies. As a consequence, people become excessively attuned to professional authority and develop an acute consciousness of risks, dangers, malfunctions, preventive measures, epidemiological statistics, etc. The individual experiences a permanent state of uncertainty that never seems to be resolved, but at best only ameliorated. A general sense of uncertainty paves the way for both moral panic as well as for fanatical politically correct campaigns that target the “unsure” or the “undisciplined.” The surrender of the private body to the public realm entails its transformation into a public object. As such it is susceptible not only to external interventions, often under the guise of benign expert advice or paternalistic warnings, but it also becomes amenable to moral redefinition. Good examples are the campaigns against smoking, or for the promotion of vitamin-intake, routine mammographies, and the like. The new professionals, as the administrators of what once had been private matters, are assumed to be also vested with moral authority. Whether such authority is wasted through bureaucracy, political struggle, corruption, or charlatanism is a legitimate subject of analysis, though again beyond the scope of this discussion. Furthermore, the query whether the newly ultraspecialized professionals are bound to undermine the moral authority bestowed upon them might be a valid supposition. As far as public moralities are concerned, they should be viewed from Durkheim’s perspective on moral authority. That is, public moralities are ideals, principles, and norms that are limited in range, specific in character, narrow in their implications, and almost technical in appearance. They possess the power to impose their moral vision and authority both on private individuals as well as on institutional structures (Durkheim 1973). Driving without drinking, antismoking campaigns, and ecological awareness are among a long list of these moralities. Kenny placed Durkheim’s approach to morality in a broad perspective when he stated: “Durkheim understood the importance played by ideals in comprehending the working of morality. Like Kant, 136

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Durkheim assumed that morality is based on ideals, and according to Durkheim, social life produces the necessary ideals to sustain a moral life” (Kenny 2007, 270). Public moralities with their cultural discourses are what ultimately construct the contemporary idea of body. The same cultural discourses objectify the professionals’ moral legitimacy, as well as the meanings employed to redefine concepts such as intimacy, secrecy, confidentiality, trust, empathy, etc. For example, it is pertinent to ask whether the traditionally guarded intimacy in relation to the body has been thoroughly abandoned in favor of a public code? Has it therefore changed its rules of conduct, or its significance, and if so what has become of it, what meaning has it now assumed? Like any morality, the current public moralities are oppressive in its nature. Contemporary public moralities, through their cultural discourses, are what constructs strict attitudes toward health, as well as the disproportionate attention given to body appearance and image projection, exemplified in severe standards of weight, fitness, relaxation, etc. By means of cultural discourses it pronounces ideals, spells out the degree of individual control to be exercised, defines the standards, the criteria to be applied, and the classifications that can justify the normative as well as the deviant (Foucault 2005, 103). Public moralities make clear the sanctions as well as the status benefits and other rewards the individual will reap if he or she behaves according to its rules. One example of such an oppressive ideal is that of the youthful appearance: the slim, well-formed, athletic, natural, and playful look. As Turner (1996, 3) writes of the consequences of postindustrial culture: “there is a specific focus on the body beautiful, on the denial of aging body, on the rejection of death, on the importance of sport and on the general moral value of keeping fit.” Generally it can be argued that the imbalance disfavoring the private realm affects the strength and the authority of its cultural discourses, thus leaving individuals to perceive their own emotions or body through the imperatives of the public moralities. Habermas corroborated when he declared that contemporary family “lost the power to shape conduct” (1989, 155). The public moralities impose new health conceptions and alternative approaches to the body, but it is also public morality that accounts for negative phenomena such as anorexia, diet fads, excessive exercise, vitamin crazes, obsession with medical tests, and the like. 137

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The ethics of individual’s well-being places the individual and his psychological and physical needs into the core of obligations of the public realm. I posit that a major implication of the ethics, through public moralities, cultural discourses, and institutional practices, is a self-imposed conformism. This is a conclusion that might be drawn from the overly normative positions promoted by the family. Furthermore, this is a conclusion that can also be inferred from the corrective therapy practiced by the sprawling psychological agencies, which often as a side effect of the help provided to sustain personal adjustment, encourage social conformism. Lastly, conformism is inherently associated with the acceptance of oppressive ideals imposed by public moralities, like in the case of the ideal of the perfect body image. The over-institutionalization of contemporary public life becomes a context of individual dependency on institutional practices, without any alternative to counterbalance it. The dependency on public institutions, places individuals in a constant visibility or in other words permanent transparency, which is, by definition, an oppressive state of self-control and supervision alike. One may assume that extensive exposure to institutional forces and especially to public moralities, with no place to escape, may lead to a self-imposed conformism, as the only possible solution. The implications of a “total public life,” to paraphrase Goffman, may be a life with no place to retreat from the “organized others,” no place to exercise individuality, no place for everyday escapism and subversion. The question whether an extensive public environment, densely institutionalized and prone to service private needs by enforcing ideals of public moralities, is going to contribute to Western civility or is going to be an obstacle of it there is yet to be seen.

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7 The Public Sphere as a Metanetwork Space At the end of the nineteenth century Durkheim observed a rise in individuality at the expense of “the sphere of social,” a process which he described as a gradual, but fundamental change characterizing the modern age (Durkheim 1964, 204). Durkheim added: “the average intensity of the common conscience progressively becomes enfeebled” (170). Seemingly, we witness here a contradiction: on one hand as Durkheim put it “the sphere of the Social” is becoming weaker, while on the other hand there is plenty of convincing arguments that the public sphere is becoming dominant, as a category to be reckoned with in collective life. Berger (1974) even thought that the public sphere had become overly institutionalized. This contradiction explains to a certain extent the nature of the contemporary public sphere and its prominence. The weakening of the social is reflected in the decreased strength of collectively shared beliefs, symbols, and values as well as in the lack of power and weight of such central institutions, as political institutions, community, family, and religion. However, since Durkheim’s observations concerning the fundamental forces that led to the emergence of his model of “organic solidarity,” the relationships between modern individuals and their reference groups have undergone profound social changes that have transformed the hitherto familiar “social.” Thus, I argue, a part of this category has been fused with what is now identified as the public sphere and consequently has become central to collective life. The process of transformation of the modern “social” during which it diminished in both volume and force, was indeed consistent with Durkheim’s arguments. However, the rate of change, the intensity and the ensuing disjunctions it engendered, all of which characterize the contemporary western Social, have exceeded Durkheim’s analysis. 139

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“The social” as a general principle that organizes human affairs is subject to changes and transformations. It is widely held at present, that what is now defined as the “social” has been considerably reduced in its influence. The rupture between the modern and the so-called late-modern social and the impact of the latter on the present type of public sphere, should be considered. The distinctions between the modern and late-modern “social,” as well as between social and public space, are in essence analytical artifices (Bauman 1994). Without these distinctions, everything would be deemed an all-inclusive ahistorical social, although this may in fact, contain a kernel of truth. However, since so many differences seem to distinguish the social life of modern times from the social life of socalled late modernity, one is forced to make conceptual distinctions in order to represent these two different social realities. For example, the changes in respect to the category of the sacred and the institutional impact of these changes have consequently defined the two social orders. Furthermore, a conceptual differentiation between social and public space assumes that changes in the realm of the sacred and their far-reaching implications have also given rise to qualitatively new conditions that force a discrimination between contrasting collective spaces. It is not that the modern, “old” “social” has altogether disappeared with the present public sphere replacing it: such an argument would be misleading. Rather, certain qualities and characteristics that were in the past a part of the constituted social have been so transformed that they can be now viewed as having an affinity with what is commonly designated as the contemporary public sphere. For Baudrillard (1983, 76), who ultimately foresees “the end of the Social,” its radical transformation is self-evident: “…the social can appear today for what it really is: a right, a need, a service, a use value pure and simple. No longer a conflictual political structure: but a welcoming structure.” There is little doubt that at the beginning of the twenty-first century, following the decline of grand political ideologies, as well as the diminishing importance of the nation state, the late-modern public sphere has emerged as a predominant collective space. The implications for the character of contemporary culture, the central concern of this chapter, are yet to be considered. Habermas’ definition of the bourgeois public sphere (1991) views it as the locus where people openly carry on a critical–rational discourse 140

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concerning common affairs. For Habermas, the public sphere refers especially to institutions that promote a political discourse about matters of general social importance. In light of the widespread criticism that Habermas’ conception has provoked, in respect to some of the weaknesses which he himself acknowledged (Calhoun 1994), I propose to view the contemporary public sphere in a broader sense, as a meta collective space of diverse forms of social solidarity. Furthermore, the public sphere should be considered a collective space of communal happenings, affairs, and exchanges, implicating members of a society at the most general level of plurality, toleration, and participation. It is a collective space that has institutionalized interconnectedness by visible means of common accepted media. The definition of public sphere put forward here, has some affinity with the perspective on civil sphere advanced by Alexander: “I wish to understand civil society as the area not of solidarity narrowly defined in a communitarian and particularistic way but in universalistic terms.” Furthermore, Alexander is even more specific where he argues: “only this kind of solidarity can provide a thread, not an identity in the narrow sense, but of the kind of mutual identification that unites individuals dispersed by class, religion, ethnicity, or race” (2006, 43). The Character of Personal Networks The contemporary public sphere I argue, reflects new and unprecedented social relations that are founded on new forms of social solidarity, one of which is the personal network. Hence, the substantiation of public exchanges and contents are to a great extent defined by the character of such networks and bear their stamp. Before proceeding further, a brief description of these networks is called for, though some discussion on other characteristics has been carried out in previous chapters. With the rise of individuality, the weakening of integrated primary groups, the disappearance of traditional communities, and more recently the persistent disintegration of modern urban communities, personal networks have become increasingly central, as have all types of micro and affective groups and their variants (Bauman 2004; Weber 1971, 55). The network is a fluid yet particular collection of persons centering around one individual, all of whom have a vague awareness of one another, or perhaps no awareness at all, with the exception of the central individual who is the initiator and who knows each person who is part of what can be termed an personal network. While each individual might be the 141

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center of a network, he also belongs to other networks which center around other individuals. Obviously, from a theoretical perspective, there are as many networks as there are individuals. Mary Douglas was perhaps among the first to observe this configuration when she raised the issue in several African countries, “that has focused the attention on what is called the network of links a man has to a circle radiating out from himself. In a complex society, networks are the minimum level of which social relations can be investigated. They are the sustaining baseline of social ties from which corporate institutions arise” (1973, 89). Later, Fisher (1982) suggested the concept of “personal networks” that is to some only partially co-extensive with our concept. Melluci (1989) in discussing the collective action of current social movements argues that they “take the form of networks comprised of a multiplicity of groups, that are dispersed, fragmented and submerged in everyday life, and which act as cultural laboratories.” Melluci’s concept is different from the one advanced here, nevertheless there is a certain kinship, especially in the description of their features. Maffesoli’s concept of “modern tribes” is also reminiscent of our configuration, when he states that tribes “are unstable, since the persons of which these tribes are constituted are free to move from one to another” (1996, 6). Employing Troeltsch’s distinction between the “sect type” and the “church type,” Maffesoli posits that the sectarian type “allows the social form of the network to be accented: an unorganized yet solid whole, invisible, yet forming the backbone of any entity” (84). This description applies to our concept of personal networks as well. Networks are comprised of subjects, encountered and selected by one individual during his life activities, with whom he has developed ties of affinity and with whom he maintains a persistent social relationship. A network may exhibit patterns and structures reflecting both the selection and permanency of the network’s members as well as of the character of the relationship between them. However, considering the built-in pressures of anomie, geographical dislocations, and the aversion of the late-modern political-economy to permanency, networks are increasingly likely to be short-lived and ever-changing. Thus, they are incapable of establishing long-term social contracts and long-term interindividual exchanges. Consequently, they are also less capable of producing stable social positions and therefore a social structure. Consequently, the individual’s personal network is neither a conventional type of community, nor a group of friends. 142

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The network, an increasingly prevalent late-modern configuration of social solidarity, is closer to Baudrillard’s description of the latemodern social: “no longer even a structure, but a substance” (1983, 76). He proceeds further to describe the new social which he himself doubts can still be regarded as something resembling the conventional social. Thus, he observes that the late-modern social substance is “a kind of fetal security space helping everywhere to relieve the difficulty of living, providing everywhere for the quality of life, like comprehensive insurance…” (77). In other words, the late-modern social substance looks like a culturally affective one, resembling Baudrillard’s networks of symbolic ties that are “precisely neither relational nor social” (1983, 67). Personal networks are characterized neither by economical exchanges nor by political struggles, and as such these networks have, to some extent, a relatively autonomous existence. Reflecting an individual’s preferences and affinities, networks are dominated by the principle of “gift exchange”. Therefore, in the absence of social structure and political struggles, affective, moral, and aesthetic criteria become the dominant factors in the makeup of networks. From this perspective, the public sphere is the conceptual locus of reference for the multitude of networks composed of mostly incognizant participants. As for the nature of networks’ cultural commentaries it is mainly concerned with screening, testing, application, encoding and in general, practice of cultural discourses. Yet, beyond all these, there is motivation to seek ways to found common ground in order to establish social solidarity. By virtue of their constitution, such networks not only lack collective consciousness but are also incapable of developing social action. This is also true of more homogeneous or specialized networks that draw many of their “members” from a larger group of people who share a common social characteristic, such as singles, or even, those who share a common dominant activity, such as, for example, computer scientists. However, whether networks are permeated by more fundamental structures, such as class or specific status groups or whether networks consolidate themselves into more permanent patterns, are certainly pertinent questions requiring a separate analysis. For the time being and for our limited purposes, the concept of the personal network is employed to reflect a generic configuration that increasingly pervades and transcends present social relations. Such configurations do not replace existing social groups but underlie them at a deeper level and thus shape their character. Hence, I posit that networks create new cultural commentaries that resonate with their characteristics. 143

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Without going into detail, the radical changes that the contemporary family has undergone, demonstrate what has been predicted for a long time: the family has been losing ground as an underlying matrix and an authoritative generator of cultural commentaries. Similarly, at the beginning of the twenty-first century it has become clear that the formal work-corporative model, especially the differentiation of production and the high specialization of the post-capitalist work market, is also no longer capable of becoming a paradigm defining suitable cultural commentaries. In the past, in both traditional and early modern societies, family and work affected fundamental social relations, while the forms of the public sphere mirrored the character of each type of society (Sennett 1993). The contemporary public sphere thus reflects new types of social relations affected by new forms of social solidarity among which the network has a prominent place. Hence, the cultural discourses and commentaries of the contemporary public sphere reflect the logic of personal networks. In the sense employed here, personal networks should be taken as a whole, as a complex fabric of relations. Only as such do they make sense, and constitute an object worthy of analysis and whose importance can be theoretically appraised. In other words, networks are not a specific form of social organization, but rather a certain configuration of intersubjectivity. The Metaspace of Networks The nature of networks, in their entirety, requires in its turn a metanetwork space that transcends their singularity, fragmentation, heteromorphism, and even their incidentality. Without such a common metaspace that inspires and guides, it would not be possible to make sense of these dispersed networks. The public sphere provides networks with a common cultural vocabulary and a general system of meaning. Furthermore, the public sphere distills and transforms networks’ intraexchanges into communicable maps, aiming at the most basic level of intersubjectivity, as well as at the highest level of generality. Handelman (1990, 15) indirectly supports the argument of the role of the public sphere when he attempts to present a definition of Public events: Still, it is vital to the ongoing existence of any more-or-less dense network of persons that there exist a media through which members 144

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communicate to themselves in concert about the characters of their collectivities, as if these do constitute entities that are temporally coherent. Public events are conveyances of this kind.

Considering the centrality of microgroups and small formations in mass society (Maffesoli 1996), among which personal networks display some paramount characteristics, it is essential to examine the relations between these networks and the public sphere and the effect of these relations on the production of cultural commentaries. The argument presented here contends that there is a reciprocal relationship between the public sphere, as a metaspace and personal networks, which coalesce in coherent everyday working patterns. The public sphere defines the nature of the communicative exchanges within networks, the discursive agenda, as well as the selection of contents: topics, issues, narratives, and heroes to be brought up in the exchanges. From a macro perspective, the public sphere acts as a collective space, casting its glow, as it were, beyond each one of the singular networks and imposing a common frame of reference. In general, networks are concerned with the objectivation of the social and its diverse forms. Specifically, the concern is with the objectivation of the social as it has come to be expressed by the public sphere. That is, networks, by the nature of their inner exchanges attend to maintenance, application, revision, and experimentation with various types and forms of cultural commentaries. Beyond these exchanges at the macro level the target is to attain social solidarity. Seen from a broad perspective, the existence of a multitude of personal networks has a resonating impact on the public sphere, which in its turn forces the character of a metadiscourse. The public sphere and networks, on the basis of their interrelationship, form a context upon which, to a certain extent the cultural is defined. This context draws from the contemporary historical characteristics of public space as well as from the essential qualities of personal networks. Public Sphere as a Converting Medium In light of the vanishing appeal of powerful ideologies, as well as the nation state’s significant loss of authority, the contemporary public arena has become a prominent collective space. As such, and in view of it as a common metaspace of personal networks, the public realm has become a converting medium. That is, it has been converting the social into the culture and directly linked to this, it has enabled changes in sacred and profane. As Durkheim pointed out the formation of the 145

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sacred is directly connected to the social. Lii (1998) corraborates when he stated “while the economic is always profane in nature, the social leads to the production of the sacred” (118). As far as the culture is concerned, I posit, as I already have mentioned in other chapters, that it has an affinity with the profane, especially by playing on it’s amorality and thus disconnecting the immanency from its sacred origin. As a collective space, the public sphere is constituted, in addition to institutions, by groups and agencies such as mass media, commercial culture, new age communities, leisure clubs, art organizations, Internet forums, law courts, therapy groups, and the like. These groups and agencies share a common purpose, latently or manifestly, and they are involved in the production of cultural interpretations. As a result, the public realm imposes upon the social a similar scheme that makes it into a meaningful production system. The direction of the conversion we have alluded to is from the social to the cultural thus, from action to commentary, from instrumentality to reflexivity. The impetus is toward converting the concreteness of social organization into symbolic categories, in other words, converting the substantiality of social structure into representations. I assume that there is an inverse relationship between social and culture. That is, when social is weak—as presently it appears to be—in producing action, then culture is vigorous in producing authoritative commentaries, and vice versa. The nature of networks is such that no vigorous pressures are exercised from within to edify and sanctify any institutional structures. Instead, there are overwhelming pressures to create guiding meanings, confessional intimacies, and communicative maps. The ever-changing human composition of networks solicits a production of new cultural discourses, that is, commentaries and cultural interpretations, thus stressing the communicative component that can guide and interpret individual’s experience. The result is a newly constructed perspective, that presumably offers appropriate means for the creation of cultural commentaries, which are necessary for interpreting contemporary social relations. For example, consider the shift to a new conceptual vocabulary: instead of concrete action, the new vocabulary is comprised of contemplated scenes; instead of social exchanges, the prevailing idiom uses interactive narratives; social roles are replaced by constructed identities and social conflicts by living dramas; social movements metamorphose into civic cultures, and communities into networks of support groups. 146

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Whether this conceptual vocabulary strikes a chord and is better suited for describing radical changes that have taken place in the post-industrial world, or whether it is merely a change of fashionable jargon remains to be seen and is open for debate. Nonetheless, it can be argued that this newly constructed cultural perspective reflects the prominence of the public sphere and its tendency to shift from a social-instrumentalist model to a culturalinterpretive one. The Case of Mass Media: Converting the Social into Cultural Commentaries Confronted by persistent instability and anomic social forces, contemporary culture is urgently pressed to provide new commentaries and new sets of meanings which might serve as a guide to new perplexing social relations. Furthermore, as the weak “social” gives way to an increasing self-reflexive individuality, there are pressures to produce new cultural discourses whose repertoire of commentaries and interpretations is commensurate with this new situation. I argue, then, that the public sphere, as a viable collective space cannot be engaged in any major social utopia nor recruited by a belief system. For precisely that reason it is suited to address the phenomenon of growing individuality with its new forms of solidarity, such as personal networks, by facilitating the emergence of a new cultural discourse. For Belahrodsky (1995), the peculiar energy and universality of the western public sphere is determined by its “capacity to deal with a plurality of texts, none of which have the hegemony in defining the reality…” The new cultural discourse provides individuals with new compatible sets of fundamental values, for example: self-realization, quality of life, interpersonal awareness, emotional growth, gender solidarity, multiculturalism, global cooperation, civic participation, etc. These values assist, among other things, to direct individuals, via their participation in networks, in how to cope with the potential dangers of individuality, alienation, political inactivity, transnationalism, non-Western immigration, consumerism, fragmentary identity, absence of an supportive community. But then how can fundamental values exist in the absence of a strong social and authoritative institutions. The question becomes a legitimate one especially in the light of the salient role played by individual’s personal network. 147

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Relevantly, George Bataille (1988, 7), a precursor of postmodernism insightfully commented in the early 1950s: Opening myself to inner experience, I have placed in it all value and authority. Henceforth I can have no other value, no other authority. Value and authority imply the discipline of a method, the existence of a community.

The entire fabric of networks springs from the individual, reflecting the inner experience of one’s self, developing around one’s biographical activities and bearing one’s own limitations. Media work, as a central component of the public sphere, provides a good illustration of how the public sphere converts the social into cultural commentaries or, to put it in the words of M. de Certeau “it could be said that our age of mass media transmutes society into a public” (1997, 25). To the same end, one might apply this analysis to other public agencies or organizations such as education institutions, civic movements, nongovernmental organizations, etc. As a major component of the public sphere, the media facilitate the diminishment of the social and the conversion of parts of it into various cultural elements, which, for example, explains the overwhelming contribution of the media to the growing recognition of popular culture. Media tends to “reduce the distance” between the audience and the protagonists of its programs, whether they are politicians, dignitaries, or the rich and famous. Distances which are the representation of the social, wanes when the “camera,” the generic metaphor for all media intrusion, moves in for a close-up. “The social,” in the world of the ubiquitous mass media, is not only “exploded” by an excess of “close-up” shots, but is also “invaded” by an over-production of narratives about anything and everybody. This often gives the feeling of a world created by the force of destiny, where no other visible forces of a different order exist that are capable of intervening in the course of one’s life, with no objective reality connecting all destinies, a world, therefore devoid of the social. Certain media genres reduce social roles to serially narrated familiar characters who easily become stereotyped and with whom the audience has a pseudo-intimate relationship; whatever and whomever is visible in public, the greater the illusion of knowing that object, or that individual. Arendt (1958, 50) correctly noted that the term “public” signifies “that everything that appears in public can be seen 148

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and heard by everybody.” Since everything public has to be seen and heard, the public sphere is by nature a hollow and dispassionate space, which falsely posits that whatever is visible is also real. Hence, it is no wonder that the cultural commodities of the entertainment industry have become the most visible expressions of culture. They are also by definition the most real. Media treats its subjects as though they are not persons possessing a social identity, but rather nonnegotiable, stereotypical cultural objects; the media are capable of showing only a subject’s “external contours” and not his or her hidden complexity, and thus, the visible categories stand for the only accepted version of reality. It is precisely an individual’s inner experience in the world of networks that medianarratives seem incapable of capturing. Nevertheless, regardless of the limitations of the media, the process of conversion from social into cultural production is a vigorous one, deeply embedded in the reciprocal relationship between networks and public sphere. Expressions of the Culturalized Realm As I have already stated, following Durkheim (1965) who asserted that the social is inherently interwoven with the Sacred, I further posit again that culture has an affinity with the profane. The frequently asked and essential question is what has currently happened to the sacred and what changes has it incurred: has the sacred, for example, only been relocated, or thoroughly dislocated (Mestrovic 1985), or has the sacred been dispersed (Bar-Haim 1997). Certainly, the individual–group relations in the West, which in the past were seminal in generating transcendental beliefs, ideals, icons, and sacred symbols have fundamentally changed. The argument advanced here is that the dispersal of the sacred has resulted in its dilution, which has made the conversion of much of what was perceived as sacred into a culturalized-realm relatively facile. The changes in the sacred have naturally intensified the concurrent conversion of the profane itself and whatever it represented. Thus, similarly, the profane has also become a culturalized realm and everything considered, one may assume that this hybrid category is an immanent one. The argument advanced here rests on two pillars: the reality of networks as a growing contemporary form of social solidarity and the public sphere as a metaspace of these networks. As I have already argued, the public sphere is a collective space that draws on the 149

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character of the personal networks and in turn shapes their universe. Likewise, mirroring the constitution of networks and, I presume, other new forms of solidarity of the contemporary social arena, the public sphere is a de-sacralized space not dominated by any belief system and nor by a hegemonic vision. As such, it becomes, by definition, an arena that defies traditional–cultural sources such as religion and their rituals, as well as ideologies and their entrenched classifications. Yet, the public sphere is likely to culturalize both the sacred and profane. The social is absent of the transcendental sacred and consequently the latter as I have already stated, has become a culturalized realm. The profane is converted and likewise becomes a culturalized space by its affinity with culture. These changes have innumerable implications for understanding contemporary culture. A number of expressions of the culturalized realm are worth mentioning in brief. I would argue that these include among many others, the institutionalization of a new secular ethics, the aestheticization of rituals, and the obsessive preoccupation of individual with selfnarration. Motivations that acted in the past to sustain the sacred have found in the institutionalization of a secular ethics, for example, a viable solution. A few examples illustrate this point. It might well be that the individual security formerly derived from the power of a collective togetherness and its sacred symbols is now being fulfilled by the agencies of the welfare state; or, some of the ravaging in-group and intergroup conflicts of the past which only the mobilization of sacred group symbols and totems could have prevented and quelled, are presently addressed by routine mechanisms of conflict mediation—a strong national legal system or even international legal institutions designed to provide remedies against hostilities and devastating discord. The cultural discourse of human rights in general and a new charter of rights for various traditionally oppressed groups such as minorities, women, children, and the disabled, have alleviated some of the pain and humiliation. In order to ensure the substitution of the sacred through the institutionalization of a secular ethics, two complementary efforts have been set in motion. The first has been to demystify most forms of collective representations, reducing them to communicative cultural phenomena. The second endeavor has been to strongly inculcate and maintain the civil systems of values that lie behind everyday working arrangements. The first action, in other words, was to reduce the 150

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power of the sacred while the second complementary action was to ensure the importance of civil values, as an immanent secular metamorphism. The coexistence, however, of diverse, as well as of contradicting sets of values, seems to be a recognized condition of both modern and late-modern societies. However, as Alexander succinctly formulated, “values are created and renewed through episodes of directly experiencing and re-experiencing transcendental meaning” (1988, 192). Such a statement connects between values and their transcendental source. However, whether values are inherently attributed to transcendental religious experiences still remains a point of contention. Considering the loose structure of networks, their amorphous identity, lack of center, and nonauthoritative symbolic representations, it is obvious that whatever they may generate in terms of the sacred is rather feeble, and hence rituals, as the major vehicle of the sacred, become superfluous. Temporality and fragmentation, the centrality of individuals and the emphasis on everyday life—these characteristics of networks are neither conducive to preserving past mythology, nor to transcending collective ideals and creating new sacred symbols. Under such conditions, having lost their power to inspire a vision of the sacred and to regenerate its awe, contemporary Western rituals are becoming excessively aesthetic and performative and even entertainment-oriented: spectacles, ceremonies, pageantries, and artistic performances. Cultural festivals, leisure opportunities, nature-oriented adventures, artistic performances, sports tournaments, popular shows, and aesthetic endeavors, all of which fulfill some of the functions that once were fulfilled by traditional rituals and community festivals are flourishing, at least quantitatively. The dispersed sacred and consequently the legitimated culturalized-realm have attained a point of relativization. That is, the two fundamental categories of sacred and profane now no longer seem autonomous and antithetical, as is especially visible in the domains of arts, science, public education, etc., but hybridized and to some extent amalgamated in blurred categories. Gergen referred to this as “the loss of the identifiable” (1991, 112) and Geertz (1983) named the various newly emerging academic disciplines generically as the “blurred genres.” The increasing difficulty of discriminating between the private and public spheres one, is also consistent with the configuration of an individual’s personal network that experiences its own existence 151

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as a construct of multiple individualities, thus transcending both the public and private spheres. Da Matta (1984, 27) has argued that there are “situations in which the house extends itself into the street and into the city in such a way that the social world is centralized by the domestic metaphor and on the other hand… when the street and its values tend to penetrate the private world of the residence, with the world of the house being integrated into the metaphor of public life.” The argument presented here, however, goes beyond Da Matta’s which assumes that this distinction is only blurred at certain times and in particular situations. This is a fundamental and pervasive feature, and not a situational or a circumstantial one. The contemporary public sphere has been instrumental in effecting cognitive ferment, by converting portions of the sacred into the profane. The anomic forces at work cannot continue to tolerate permanent sets of abiding values and stable cultural commentaries aimed to sustain the hegemony of a nontranscendental sacred. The inner experience of individuals, as Bataille noted, is stronger than collective experience and contemporary culture reflects this anomic state. The dilution of the sacred and the making of the culturalized-realm results in the increasing lack of distinction between categories, as in so many areas of contemporary life. This is especially the case in respect to individuals’ public and private spheres, which have given way to a new hybrid cultural concepts. Such concepts as “open intimacy,” or “televized public confessions of private life,” have become a frequent linguistic code. Hence, as part of the cultural commentaries of inner experiences, private life is unveiled yet communicatively standardized as well. Much of the biographical material is culturally codified and incorporated into personal narratives, yet stylized to be interpersonally traded. The opposite is true as well: generic public patterns of discourse are often absorbed into what are considered private self-constructions. The individual’s private affairs are also open to others, through bureaucratic texts on one level, such as personal information forms, computer archives, Facebook, blogs and at a different level, through therapeutic texts of support groups, and of interpersonal workshops. A good example of the fusion of public discourse with private talk is the astounding complacency with which personal declarations, confessions, revelations about one’s own body practices, such as diets, cosmetic operations, in vitro fertilization, etc., are publicly accepted. This is true also of the acceptance of publicly discussing 152

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cures for certain diseases that in the past were associated with shame and embarrassment. At the same time personal interest is routinely focused on the health of public figures, often presented by media as narratives of collective interest. Illouz’s assertion that “Actors in civil society have promoted the therapeutic narrative” (2007, 58), and I would say among other types of narratives, is poignant (Featherstone, Hepworth, and Turner 1995). The pervasive sense of vulnerability, as a persistent and lasting condition of individuals living under the logic of the transient social, dissolves anything pertaining to the collective sacred into particularistic cultural categories, standards, and references, that can no longer affirm the sense of the exclusive dichotomy dividing sacred from profane. Under such circumstances contemporary culture seems to be pressed to produce new categories, new classifications, and new references. Thus, it is urgently solicited to offer new values and create new commentaries, often allowing it to accept what once was considered heretical, as well as to receive what was formerly excluded into the uncertain boundaries of the mainstream. A good case in point is the new ethics of civil society, with its drive to secure legitimization for homosexuals, women, minorities, children, and victims of all categories (Alexander 2006). Political correctness, multiculturalism, and the citizen’s culture, to mention only a few of these civil, secular phenomena, reflect the underlying presence of networks on the one hand and the crisis of the collective representations projected into a nontranscendental sacred on the other. Hence, these are the contextual parameters upon which sacred symbols are transformed into newly secularized ethics, that is a nonsacred, nonprofane cultural morality. The public sphere attempts to bridge between individuals and groups thus encouraging a self-conscious individuality and an acute awareness of duality. In the absence of authoritative collective cultural commentaries, as well as strong mechanisms such as rituals with which to inculcate them, contemporary collective life is not capable of imposing many standards of constructed objectivity, let alone exercise authority in the demarcation of cognitive categories. This situation forces individuals bewildered by questions of identity to obsessively examine themselves. Contemporary culture tends to cultivate individuals to become the object of their own inquiry, often accompanying their actions with spontaneous self-narration, frequently aided by the ubiquitous 153

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camera, video camera, tape recorders, portable phones, or, on a different order, with the help of psychotherapists, and various and sundry types of personal counselors. Furthermore, social movements that celebrate the self-reflexivity of individuals, such as psychotherapy, the self-help movement and the self-improvement movements act on precisely this principle. Namely, the individual is his own reference, responsible for controlling his own definition of reality, as well as possessing the potential to do so. The newly culturalized-realm is thus the fecund ground offering popular commentaries to a multitude of solitary individuals living amid large metropolitan crowds, spending increasing amounts of time on highways, the most ubiquitous metaphor of permanent temporariness. Yet, driven to know everything possible about their own condition, individuals display a curiosity that has become an end in itself, as if it were the only raison d’etre. Touraine (1995, 188) in analyzing the contemporary western society, states as much in his cogent formulation: “Actors have ceased to be social actors. They have become introverted and are dedicated to a narcissistic quest for their identity….”

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8 The Imbalance in Public/Private Relations in Totalitarian States and the Ensuing Cultural Resistance To argue that the modern state has emerged as the central “institutional candidate” (Berger 1974, 188) capable of demolishing the private/public dichotomy, or rebalancing the two spaces, is to overlook the bankruptcy of the state over the last forty years. But it is also to neglect the manifestations of cultural resistance, wherever the state has intervened in private affairs. The last forty years have seen the fall of most of Europe’s totalitarian states, such as Spain, Portugal, Russia, and the East European communist states; China has emerged as a hybrid one-party government with a quasi-market economy while the South American states have thrown out the military governments in exchange for a sort of mechanistic democracy. Dictators in several Arab states in North Africa and the Middle-East have been overthrown in dramatic civic revolutions which occurred in the spring of 2011. The revolutions were followed by political struggle and challenging attempts to enforce a civil democratic regime. As far as the Western democracies are concerned, they have reached a crisis of confidence in the welfare system compounded by unprecedented waves of Muslim immigration. The intervention of post World War II totalitarian states in the private life of individuals in an attempt to recruit it to its goals and to define it politically met largely with resistance and resentment. The totalitarian ideological age exhausted itself and by the late 1980s the individual’s desire that private life be detached from the paternalism of the politically dominated public sphere became a self-evident truth. In the case of Spain, Portugal, and South America, without disregarding 155

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their differences, control over private life under the totalitarian governments was both facilitated and to some extent tolerated because among others it was argued that these governments were legitimately defending the catholic faith from communism and unfaithfulness. Religious sentiments were politically manipulated in order to rally frustrated private lives and to subsume them under ideological conservative political systems. In other words, the private sphere was subjected to the supervision of a politically defined public sphere. In both Russia, East-Central European countries, and China the ideological precepts of their varieties of communism aimed at dismantling the existence of the private sphere and including it within the officially controlled and supervised public realm. Governmental policies forced individuals to renounce their private life, and especially to sacrifice their family life for the sake of state policy goals, such as industrialization, collectivization, cultural revolution, and demographical planning. Such was the interdiction of having more than one child in China, the prohibition of abortions in Romania, regulative measures in all East European countries limiting migration to major cities, relocations of ethnic population, multiple families dwellings in one apartment, etc. Over the years, these policies eroded family life with disastrous repercussions on individual morality. It is of utmost importance to examine the imbalanced relations between the two spheres, when they have been caused by a totalitarian state policy, striving toward subordinating the private life to the state-dominated public one. That is, it is worthwhile to understand the specific case displayed by a totalitarian state in causing a radical imbalance between the two realms. Not only because such a state overrules an authentic public life and suppresses any other public alternative influences, but also because it is openly motivated to define the character of the private life and harness it to fulfill political goals of the public life. The purpose here is to briefly analyze the corrective efforts involved in coping with the imbalance in the relations between the two realms, when the asymmetry was caused by a totalitarian state policy. The East-Central European Communist countries are taken as a case study, special emphasis is placed on Romania. The imbalance between the two realms, with its wide implications is built on both the ideology and the policy of the totalitarian states. It serves its nature that assumes a fundamental tenuousness of the social order that can be met only by the sole power of a totalitarian 156

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state. That is, the imbalance supports the kind of legitimation needed by such states to strive toward a unity of the spheres and not toward two separate and distinctive opposites that complement one another and especially balance one another. The subjection of the private life to the public one, as in this case, is needed to legitimate a perpetual struggle against enemies and perpetrators either real or especially imaginary. The totalitarian state assumption is that, to a certain extent, its enemies operate visibly in public, but most of the time conspire and act in the invisibility of the private life. That should, with no hesitation, be controlled. Arendt emphasized the centrality of conspiracy and mass denunciation in the character of totalitarian states (Arendt 1968). Ultimately, the enemies are believed to have as their major goal the destruction of the political order, presented as the social order. That is, the totalitarian state heralds that only a single political force that controls both public and private life is the required solution. It is doubtless that a state can rule a public sphere and by derivation a private one without a certain major public morality. Such a public morality centers around ethical principles that succeed in compelling both sets of cultural meanings and ensuing individual behavior. The public morality of a totalitarian state is consistent with the authority of the state. This being the case, the private life is forced to comply congruently, though it does not mean that there are no exceptions, deviant cases, and forms of resistance. A public morality, in our case, is the equivalence of a totalitarian state morality. It assumes, as has already been argued, certain hegemonic sets of guiding cultural meanings as well as instructing individual’s behavior. The same social context that produces controlling as well as oppressing cultural meanings also generates sets of cultural meaning of resistance. In our case, the imbalance between the state-dominated public life and the weak, private life is symbolically corrected by either subversive or alternative sets of cultural meanings. That is, I assume that an asymmetry of power between the two spheres creates among others, a phenomenon of cultural resistance. Furthermore, opposition against the overpowering of the private life by the public life in the context of suppression of freedom by a totalitarian state produces varieties of forms of cultural resistance. These forms are systems of symbolic codes that expressively interpret a certain perceived injustice, assuming the present social incapability to resolve it otherwise. That is, the 157

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forms of cultural resistance are defined only in reference to unfairness, informing a certain moral position. I would presume that there are several categories of cultural resistance generated by contextual conditions of a totalitarian state. A major category includes those organized cultural events in most of the cases by a certain opposition, such as musical concerts, performances, art exhibitions, etc., that take place in a more or less underground space and carry an open subversive message. Examples from East European former communist countries are the Jarocin Rock Festival in the 1980’s in Poland, Sufii performances in Budapest, American Jazz concerts in Prague, Avant-garde Art in Sofia in 1987, etc. Understandably, these cultural events were initiated and frequented by youth (Bar-Haim 1989). Other categories of cultural resistance, of which a few illustrations will be provided in this chapter, include the unorganized forms which do not have a distinctive or delineated space but are diffused and pervade the diverse media of daily communication, such as rumors, a certain daily parlance, anecdotes, uses of fashion as an idiom communicating through the bricolage of artifacts, etc. These forms of cultural resistance used to have, at least in the case of the East European Communist countries, a large appeal attracting and involving adults and youth equally. A common thread to all totalitarian states was the suppression of diversity of public language, allowing only the officially sanctioned canonic versions to exist, thus, erasing variations, gradations, and selfexpressions. The famous East European “wooden language” (“limba de lemn” in Romanian), as was known by everyone during the communist regimes, is one illustrative example (Thom 2005). The official communist language was dubbed the “wooden language,” which was initially a coded language of loyalty and mutual recognition. Over the years, it became a means of mutual control. In time, in the suppressive context of East European regimes it was also used subversively as a language to ridicule communists. That is, the officially sanctioned language was a corrupted, impoverished, and a degenerated one hidden behind superlatives, slogans, and clichés. This was a language that had no resonance or nuances, flexibility, emotions, and particularity (Cesereanu 2002). It was an impersonal, sterile language with secure and prophylactic connotations. At the farewell party of one of the Salzburg Seminars in 1994, one of the fellows, a self-effacing and subdued Albanian journalist, who in 158

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the past used to work for the official governmental press, unexpectedly asked for permission to say a few words. He then delivered a typical example of what used to be called a “communist speech,” exalting with characteristic pathos the American hosts, employing the wooden language to glorify in superlatives the exaggerated achievements of the seminar yet saying nothing substantially. When I asked some of the participants what they thought of the speech, they were divided in two groups. The East European answered emotionally that the speech was disgusting, exactly what they did not want to hear. While the participants from the Western countries replied that the speech was not appropriate for the occasion, but not more than that. It was evident that they did not have any understanding of wooden language, nor had the appropriate contextual connotation to decipher the situation. The “wooden language” was also an escape into a nonexpressive public language, a way of hiding behind clichés. Furthermore, it used the official language and stretched it to the ridiculous extreme, often attempting purposely to achieve a sublime nonsense, as an act of resistance. The wooden language was widely used in private occasions as a parody, mocking the official language. In a way it privatized a public medium of communication and by doing so it emptied it from its mission. V. Klemperer wrote during the World War II in Nazi Germany the LTI, standing for Lingua Tertii Imperi. The book contains examples and analyses of the language of the Third Reich. He took a special interest in the language of the Nazi propaganda Chief Goebels in his radio broadcastings as well as the journalistic language of the official Nazi newspapers. Klemperer, who remained in 1945 in what developed as the GDR and became a committed supporter of its initial ideals, also wrote critical notes in his diary on the language of Communism, even as early as June 1945. He wanted to publish eventually an additional book which he planned to call LQI—Lingua Quarti Imperi or the Language of the Fourth Reich (Klemperer, 2004). On July 4, 1945, Klemperer noted: The LTI lives on… An anti-Fascist language office should be set up. Analogies between Nazistic and Bolshevistic language: In Stalin’s speeches extracts of which regularly appear, Hitler and Ribbentrop are cannibals and monsters. In the articles about Stalin, the Supreme commander of the Soviet Union is the most brilliant general of all times and the most brilliant of all men living. (19) 159

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Here one could observe the semblance between the official Nazi language and the official communist one. Furthermore, as Klemperer observed, the sloganistic, inflated, and obtuse language of the public life was used often mockingly and sarcastically by people in their private life. The “wooden language” in East-Central Europe followed the Soviet society that produced the “Bolshevik speak” (Kotkin 1995). Bolshevik Speak was meant to show that an individual was a devoted Soviet citizen. In reality, it was like a cult language, full of codes that expressed the will to display one’s zealotry to the other. Fitzpatrick (2006), in her analysis of the identity and the “masks” of Soviet Russia draws attention to the nervousness of ordinary individuals about self-presentation and the anxiety around how their personal sentiments toward the regime should be artfully hidden. People often cast themselves in public according to public roles and their typical language promoted by the system: I am a worker, a patriot, an activist, and the like. To resist was to be in fact the con man, who recites the official public language persuasively, yet with no conviction or loyalty. But in reality, privately, he knew that he was an impostor, a theatrical performer, like Ilf and Petrov’s humorous hero Ostap Bender, who was so good as a performer that he could assume any role in Soviet society. To conclude, the ostentatious use of the official language in a derisive way and the performance of publicly sanctioned roles and identity were private strategies to correct the extreme imbalance between the two spheres. In the course of field research in the early 1990s in East-Central Europe which focused on the subject of public rituals of purification, I participated in several high-school reunions in Romania with people who spent most of their lives under the Communist regime. What struck me the most were the self-presentations of the graduates, as they described their major biographical events to others during the ceremony. In a still emotionless, wooden language (considering these were exciting gatherings of former playful schoolmates), each individual, in turn, would describe in an overly formal monotone, a common sequence of normative and low-key routine events. One was left to wonder whether there was no place for displaying uniqueness and particularity, or whether the language of the ceremony did not permit such nuances. Furthermore, their self-presentations may have reflected a collective biography formed in a political entity that forcibly prevailed over personal life. 160

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In the case of totalitarianship, the equation of the “state as the locus of the public sphere” is the most visible (Weintraub and Kumar 1977, 5). State and public, in the context of weak totalitarian states, might also be dissociated, bringing about expectations for a strong underground, alternative public sphere, in order to counterbalance the state. This option may give rise to strong subversive civic and political movement, as was the case in Poland before the 1989 revolution or in Brazil during the reign of the military Juntas. Fraser (1992) pointed out that excluded communities develop the capacity for resistance because they have formed counter or subaltern public sphere of their own. Developing the concept of the civil sphere, Alexander corroborated: Alternative publics succeed because their intragroup activities have allowed them to learn the art of translating their particular injustices into the more universal language of civil justice. (2006, 277)

Another strategy was resistance through overly elaborated events of private life. Resistance to the Communist political system in EastCentral Europe was for the most part not political, but cultural, especially manifest in the ritualization of private events. Paradoxically, it was Marx who developed the concept of “privatization” meaning the compensatory tendency in modern capitalism for people working in impersonal market situations to invest feelings in the realm of family and child rearing, since they could not invest in work (Sennett 1993, 32). East-Central Europeans culturally resisted the brutal party and state oppression of their private lives in many ways and forms. One way of expressing their desire for freedom in the private sphere was the disproportional investment, considering the scarce resources people had, of money, time, and energy in over-elaborated individual civil or religious ceremonies, such as weddings, birthdays, patron saint days, graduation, the first day of Spring, Women’s Day, etc. The overwhelming retreat into the personal ceremonies of private life was a reaction against governmental control which directly (but mostly indirectly) supervised the events of private space, and was concerned with repercussions and implications of public behavior, while especially fearing the spill-over into public life (Curtois 2008). Anecdotes and jokes are another form of cultural resistance, a ludic medium of unorganized subversion. Anecdotes were very popular in 161

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the Communist East European countries, as they were part of a vast, urban, antigovernment folklore; nobody seemed to know who created them and what will be their last version. One issue was however clear, most of them referred to either incumbents of the state and Party apparatus or their policies. There were many anecdotes with a punch line based on the representation of the private in the realm of the public life, while others were the opposite, the representation of the public in the realm of the privacy. A good example of the first kind were the sexual anecdotes alluding to the impotency or perversity of leaders, or anecdotes telling what the mothers of the leaders think about their mindless sons. The national hero of the anecdotes (and to a lesser extent he still is nowadays) in Romania was Bulă, an alliteration name given to men’s sexual organ. Bulă, who by his naiveté, earthy desires, and folksy wisdom succeeds whenever the political leaders fail. Often, allegorical characters were invented who, through their underdog qualities triumphed over the powerful, or won a contest. The French writer Michel Tournier is credited with having observed that “the less I laugh the more I joke.” I would presume that Tournier’s intention was that laughter represents happiness and freedom while jokes represent aggression and subversion. The less happy one is, the more inclined he would be to symbolically attack the sources of his unhappiness. From the perspective of totalitarian states that control the public life, as well as supervise and terrorize the private one, less laughter stands for an individual’s plight in the public, while more jokes stand for a defense of dignity in the private life. In a sense, laughter represents the social while joking signifies the culture and in the context of totalitarian states, the two realms are in an inverse relation. That is, the imbalance of power between the political public sphere and the weak private one generates, as I have already stated, a culture of resistance and jokes are the quintessential one. The mixing between the two realms created a juxtaposition that, on hearing the joke, produced a mocking result. M. Douglas in her comprehensive study on jokes, summarizes the common denominator of Bergson and Freud, different approaches to understanding jokes: For both the essence of the joke is that something formal is attacked by something informal, something organized and controlled, by something vital, energetic, an upsurge of life for Bergson, of libido 162

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for Freud. The common denominator underlying both approaches is the joke seen as an attack on control (Douglas 1979, 95). Without making a distinction between laughter and jokes, Lerner skillfully examines the “subversive laughter in troubled times” (Lerner 2009). Ben Lewis treated the jokes during the Communist regimes of East-Central Europe from a large historical perspective (Lewis 2006). Among others who compiled and analyzed this special ethnographic textual genre, I should also mention the pioneering work of Calin Bogdan Stefanescu and the work of Seth Benedict Graham who argues: An important reason for the genre’s preeminence was its capacity to outflank, mimic, debunk, deconstruct, and otherwise critically engage with other genres and texts of all stripes and at all presumed points on the spectrum from resistance to complicity (or from unofficial to official). (2003, 14)

Though our case is concerned with intervention in private affairs of totalitarian states resulting in a disturbing imbalance, a few brief remarks should be made concerning the Western States’ abuses in private affairs of their citizens. In Western democracies, the intervention of state, local authorities, and for-profit organizations in the private space of individuals is carried out through the bureaucracy of the governmental welfare institutions, the regulative procedures of the local authorities, the insurance systems, the banking and other commercial and profit organizations. Typical examples of intrusion of the welfare institutions are socialized medicine, social security, and unemployment agencies, all of which require personal declarations and the disclosure of private information and biographical details to the scrutiny of those in charge. This is to say nothing about large-scale investigations carried out by the USA’s Internal Revenue Service, or routine investigations by immigration agencies to discover if people made false declarations regarding private affairs. Banks demand that income, expenses, and financial activities be revealed, while an insurance company’s central computers store an enormous amount of private data including medical family histories, mental health, and learning difficulties. Advertising agencies, banks, and credit card companies regularly carry out market research and analysis of the detailed consumption patterns of each individual customer. A good example of the interference of local authorities with individuals’ private affairs is the permit-parking procedures of the Montreal 163

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Police. In order to facilitate the movement of street-cleaning vehicles, especially in the winter, every resident of Montreal is required to report to the police that guests will be spending the night in their home and using a car. It is requested to report their names, whereabouts, details of the car, and how long they plan to stay. It is obvious that both motivation as well as legitimation of the intervention by Western states in the private affairs of their citizens is very different than those of totalitarian states. The competing forces that aspire for hegemony of the public realm are multiple, in addition to the state. They are constrained by legal, administrative, and political considerations and thus, accordingly, the character of the public realm is pluralistically defined, though evidently some forces are more dominant than others. From this perspective, the overpowering of the private realm by the public one is also controlled and regulated by legalistic and political factors. The intrusion of the private life by the forces that make up the public one are not the result of an ideology and its policy, as in the case of totalitarian states. Most of the time, this is a result of modern processes and the practices of their institutions. The intervention in private affairs in the Western democracies is being legitimized by public morality, at the center of which stands the ethical principle of the individual’s well-being. The present public morality legitimates both bureaucratic efficiency as well as a spirit of consumerism. The two aspects of the Western ethos are believed to serve the individual’s well-being. However, there are perils; bureaucracy along the way undergoes a process of reification, working for its own existence, divorced from the individual’s needs and its original purposes. Perils await consumerism as well, that is, it may cease to cater for the individuals’ necessities as well as to provide their material aspirations; instead, it comes to serve the pursuit of high profits, often using unscrupulous and manipulative market practices. That is, both bureaucracy and consumerism involve practices that often encroach into private affairs. The abuse of the individuals’ civil rights by bureaucracy as well as the market manipulations becomes sources that generate dissatisfaction and frustration. Legal and administrative measures, on the one hand, mass media criticism and political protest on the other hand, provide some solutions. The question that should be posed is to what extent there still are fertile grounds to generate cultural resistance. Evidently, no society is perfect and no state is ideal, certainly no Western democracies. There 164

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are always structural sources of injustice, such as social inequality or controversial events that may frustrate groups of individuals. These are the premises on which forms of cultural resistance become the appropriate medium of protest to express social and political dissatisfaction. Especially prominent is the category of organized cultural resistance, such as rock concerts protesting against ecological policies of the European community concerning global warming, stand-up comedies deriding President Bush’s educational policies, caricatures ridiculing Prophet Mohammed, etc. Many social movements of specific causes employ expressive media to convey their messages as part of larger campaigns purported to persuade politicians, change social attitude, or promote a new public agenda. Youth, particularly those that are politically oriented, are a major, active social group that often directs developmental anger in adopting radical positions. Much of the youth culture in the West centers around forms of cultural resistance, be it graffiti, subculture styles (mods, rockers, skinheads, punks, etc.), acid, or house music, etc. Concerning the issue of public/private relations, regardless of the character of the state, youth are at that developmental intersection where an imbalance between the public and private affects and threatens them. Youth is the time when there is a need for experimental interpenetration of the two spaces, i.e., the need to carry the model and the nature of the private life into the public one and vice versa. Youth desire that family paradigm, especially its affectionate and reciprocal relationships, be infused in the impersonal, institutional constraints of the public sphere. As well as the opposite, the aspiration is to induce into the narrow and committing interpersonal relationships of the privacy, the diversity and freedom of choices of the public social roles. The imbalance between the two realms, either because of the nature of the state, as in the case of the totalitarian states, or because of fundamental changes brought up by the modernization, or both, frustrates youth everywhere. It hinders their effort to experience that interchangeability that they seek. During the early 1980s, carrying out field research on youth culture in East-Central European countries, I drew the conclusion that youth were the major source of opposition, though it was a cultural opposition only. They were the most active, imaginative, and persistent social group in their almost open and risky opposition. Their demonstrative solidarity with the Western 165

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youth culture and in general with the Western system indicated beyond doubt their opinion about the communist regimes, much to the anxiety and embarrassment of their parents and other adults. A graffiti in Prague encapsulated their attitude pronouncing that “you have your Lenin, we have our Lenon” (Bar-Haim 1989). In conclusion, an examination of the imbalanced relations between the public and private realms, caused by both ideology and institutional policies of a totalitarian state, is a good case to understand how individuals in their everyday life bear the constraints and the burden of this kind of distortion. Furthermore, it is a good example for observing how active individuals are in their effort to correct the asymmetry by attempting to expressively perform symbolic acts of rebalancing these relations. I posit that such an act is carried out through diverse forms of cultural resistance. These forms employ symbolic codes that produce subversive or alternative sets of meanings aimed at diminishing or neutralizing the stifling effect of the suppressive imbalance. References Alexander, J. ed. 1988. Durkheimian sociology: Cultural studies. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. _____. 2006. The civil sphere. New York: Oxford University Press. Arendt, H. 1958. The human condition. London: The University of Chicago Press. _____. 1968. Totalitarianism, part three of the origins of totalitarianism. New York: Havcourt, Brace and World. Bar-Haim, G. 1989. Action and heroes: The meaning of Western pop information for Eastern European youth. The British Journal of Sociology 40, no. 1: 22–45. _____. 1997. The dispersed sacred: Anomie and the crisis of the ritual. In Rethinking media, religion and culture, ed. S. Hoover and K. Lundby, 133–46. New York: Sage. Bataille, G. 1988. Inner experience. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Baudrillard, J. 1983. In the shadow of the silent majorities. New York: Semiotext. Bauman, Z. 1994. Intimations of postmodernity. London: Routledge _____. 1995. Life in fragments: Essays in post-modern times. vol. 5. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. _____. 2004. The individualized society. Cambridge: Polity. Beck, U. 1992. Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London: Sage. Belahrodsky, V. 1995. Polylogy: On the postmodern public sphere. Paper presented at the International Institute of Sociology, Trieste. Berger, P. 1974. The homeless mind. New York, NY: Random House. Berger, P., and H. Kellner. 1980. Marriage and the concentration of reality. In The sociology of family, ed. M. Anderson, 2nd ed., 320–21. London: Penguin. 166

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Index Adorno, T. W., 50, 58 advertising agencies, 163 aesthetics, 76, 143, 150–151 Africa, 49, 55, 142, 155 Akinsha, Konstantin, 53 Albania, 87, 96, 102, 107 Alexander, J., 69, 141, 151, 153, 161 Allen, R. C., 14 alternative public spheres, 161 America anti-American sentiment, 36 beauty pageants, 27 disillusionment with rationality, 16–17 glorification of, 59 ideological weakening, 31, 76–77 popular culture in, 4 public morality and normalcy, 134 secular celebrations in, 73–74 television and media programming, 38, 49–50, 52–56, 77–78 See also Western Society American Detective (TV show), 52 American jazz concerts in Prague, 158 Americanization, phenomena of, 10, 35 Anania, Bartolomeu, 97–98 Anderson, Sasha, 87–88 anecdotes as cultural resistance, 161–63 anomie and crisis of the ritual, 69–80 in East-Central Europe, 56–59, 62–63, 83–84 and intermediation, 79–80 as a permanent condition, 70–72 postmodern trends, 37–39 public sphere expansion, 42–45

anomie (continued) and redefinition of the Sacred, 41–42 and social structure erosion, 40–41 Arendt, H., 121, 148–49, 157 Aron, R., 8 atonement, 103 Auden, W. H., 24 Avant-garde Art in Sofia, 158 Bakhtin, M., 3–4, 26 balance/imbalance between, 135, 155 banks, 163 Barbu, Z., 11 Bar-Haim, G., 5–6, 59, 72, 114, 149, 158, 166 Barthes, R., 52 Bataille, George, 148, 152 Baudrillard, J., 38, 76, 80, 139, 143 Bauman, Z., 28, 72, 134, 140–41 beauty pageants, 27–28 Beck, U., 127 Belahrodsky, V., 147 Bell, D., 38 Bender, Ostap (fictional character), 160 Benjamin, Walter, 10 Berevesti affair, 93 Berger, P., 121, 124, 126, 134, 139, 155 Berghoffer, Hans, 107 Bergson, Henri?, 162–63 Berman, M., 11–12 Beron, Peter, 91, 110 betting, 18–20 Bielensky, Janosh, 98–99 Biermann, Wolf, 87–88 black market, 102–3, 114 Bledstein, J. B., 127 blurred genres, 151–53 body, 26, 124, 126–27, 135–38 171

Public–Private Relations in Totalitarian States Bohme, Ibrahim, 90 Bolshevik Speak, 159–60 Boorstin, D. J., 11 boundaries, symbolic, 84–85 Bourdieu, P., 12 Brazil, 49, 55, 161 bricolage, 14, 158 Brint, Steven, 130 Bucharest University Square demonstrations, 55, 92, 104 Bula, 162 Bulgaria collective memory, 107 cultural resistance, 158 dismissal of enterprise directors, 102 dissidents’ debate, 87–88 exposing collaborators, 91, 95 leadership profiling, 96, 98–99 metanarratives, 112, 114 trials of former leadership, 104 Bulgarian Orthodox Church, 98 bureaucracy, 164 bureaucratization, 127 Caillois, R., 18–20 Calhoun, C., 121, 141 Campbell, F. I., 17 Canada, 54–55, 163–64 capitalism, 16, 31, 38, 76, 128–29 Casanova, J., 121 cataclysms, human-caused, 43–44 Catholic Church, 98–99, 155–56 Cawelty, John G., 10 Ceausescu, Nicolae, 92–94, 98, 100, 103–4, 111–12 Ceausescu, Nicu, 103–4 Cesereanu, R., 158 Chambers, J., 7 chance, games of, 18–20 change, 14, 23, 38, 43, 47–48, 50, 56, 62, 82, 85, 92, 97, 99, 116, 121, 133, 139, 147, 165 charisma, 22–24 charisma of the media, 47–49 Chateauvallon (French TV series), 55 China, 38, 43, 155–56 Chitac, Mihair, 96–97 city, 122–23 Civic Forum, 90 civil society, 31, 43, 69–70, 141, 153 civil values system, 150–51 172

civility, 63–64, 123, 138 Clarke, J., 20 CNSAS (National Council of Studies into Security Archive), 91–92, 95 codes cognitive, 13 cultural, 6–7, 28–29, 51–55, 115 of expression, 13, 152 for public functions, 127, 137 symbolic, 157–58, 160, 166 Coleman, M., 125 collaborators, exposing, 90–92, 95 collective consciousness, 56, 63, 71, 87, 108, 114, 143 collective memory, 34, 44 collective mythology, 71, 74, 76 collective posterity, 34, 41, 44 collective spaces, 128, 140–41, 145–47 Collins, R., 16 Comaneci, Nadia, 103 commentaries, popular cultural, 6–8, 143–49 commercial entertainment festivals, 74 communism language of, 158–60 and totalitarian governments, 155–56 transition from in East-Central Europe, 56, 81–86 (See also rituals of political purification) community false sense of, 50 intermediation of interpersonal relations, 79 networks and, 141–42, 147–48 transfer of functions to public sphere, 125, 129 weakening of, 139 yearning for, 132 conceptual vocabulary, new, 146–47 conformism culture industry and, 50 families and, 133–35, 138 public moralities and, 124, 133–35 consciousness, collective, 56, 63, 71, 87, 108, 114, 143 consciousness, individual, 70, 85–86, 108 conservatism of families, 134 conspiracy and totalitarian states, 157 consumerism, 164

Index contemporary public sphere, 139–54 as a converting medium, 145–47 cultural commentaries in, 147–49 culturalized realm, 149–54 metanetwork space and, 144–45 personal networks and, 141–44 See also public sphere Cornea, D., 57 Cowen, J., 121 credit card companies, 163 Cregan, K., 135 crisis of social reference, 76–79 crisis of the ritual, 69–80 anomie as permanent condition, 70–72 crisis of social reference, 76–79 desacralization, 73–76 intermediation, 79–80 Critcher, C., 20 critiques, humorous, 13 Croce, Benedetto, 88–89 cultural codes, 54–55, 115 cultural commentaries, 6–8, 143–49, 154 cultural events with subversive message, 158 cultural imperialism, 33 cultural resistance, 155, 166 alternative public spheres, 161 cultural events with subversive message, 158 in popular genres, 4–5 ritualization of private events, 161 unorganized forms, 158, 161–63 use of wooden language, 159–60 in Western Society, 164–65 culturalized realm, 149–54 Culture as force in defining public sphere, 80 and the Profane, 146, 149 relationship with Social, 6–7, 37, 43, 53, 74–75, 145–47 Culture of Narcissism, The (Lasch), 123 cultures of resistance, 12, 33–34 Curtois, S., 161 Czajkowski, Michal, 99 Czech Republic, 87, 95, 98–99 See also Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia, 87, 90, 99, 104–5, 158 See also Czech Republic; Slovakia

Da Matta, R., 152 Dallas (TV show), 55–56 Daskalov, R., 59 de Certeau, M., 148 De Maiziere, Luther, 90 deinstitutionalization of private life, 123–26 destiny vs. merit, 18 detective stories, 4, 14 disasters, human-caused, 43–44 disenchantment of the world, 6 dissidents, 87–89 Division of Labor in Society, The (Durkheim), 69 Douglas, Mary, 84, 142, 162–63 Draghici, Alexandru, 112 Dubcheck, Alexander, 105 Durkheim, Emile anomie, 70–71, 84 collective thinking, 59, 79 divine power substituted by social order, 5 formation of the Sacred, 145–46, 149 perception of society, 122 popular events, 26 profanization of the Sacred, 114 public moralities, 136–37 redefinition of the Sacred, 41 sacred symbols, 69, 75 Social sphere weakening, 139 totems, 24 East Germany (GDR), 87–88, 90, 100, 102, 104–7, 159 See also Germany East-Central Europe anomie, 56–59, 62–63, 83–84 communist policies on private life, 156 cultural resistance, 158, 161, 163 disconnection from West, 57–58 liberal media in, 60–64 nationalistic media in, 60, 63–64 purification process (See rituals of political purification) revolutions of 1989, 60–61, 81, 83–84, 86, 92–95, 97 three frames of orientation, 83–84 transition from communism, 81–86 Western vision in media, 58–60 wooden language, 160 173

Public–Private Relations in Totalitarian States East-Central Europe (continued) youth culture, 166 See also specific country names Edles, L. D., 82 Elias, N., 45 Elster, J., 83 enemies and totalitarian states, 157 Enlightenment, Western European, 8–9, 32, 129 ethics, new secular, 150, 153 ethics of individual’s well-being, 126, 129–31, 138 Ethiopia, 49, 55 ethnic/regional festivals, 73 European Free Market, 82 European Union, 56, 60, 63 Evil, 85–86, 88, 96, 101, 108–9 evocative acts, 86 exiled writers, 87–88 existential world, tragic, 13 expansion/extension, 8–15 Facebook, 71, 152 Fall of Public Man, The (Sennett), 123 family and cultural commentaries, 144 influence of public moralities, 124, 131–35, 137–38 normativity role, 124, 132–35 transfer of functions to public sphere, 123, 125–27, 129 fault and rituals of purification, 84–85 Featherstone, M., 22, 153 fertility, women’s, 131 festivals. See secular celebrations films, 9–10, 14 Fisher, C. S., 142 Fiske, J., 11, 55 Fitzpatrick, S., 160 formulas in narratives, 10 Foucault, M., 137 France, 19, 36, 55 Frankfurt School, 12 Fraser, N., 161 freedom from social control, 5, 11, 15–17, 22 Freud, Sigmund, 162–63 Frey, J. H., 20 Fuga, A., 59 games of chance, 18–20 Ganong, L., 125 174

Garton Ash, Timothy, 95, 109 Gauck, Joachim, 106 Gauck Authority, 95 GDR. See East Germany Geertz, C., 54, 151 gender divisions, 27 gender education and the family, 133 Geraghty, C., 12 Gergen, K. J., 80, 151 Germany, 95 See also East Germany Giddens, A., 132 global culture anomie and, 41 conditions for emergence, 35–39 globalization and, 32–34, 38 mass media and, 47, 49, 53–54 and social structure demise, 34–35 See also supraculture global village, 54 globalization, 32–34, 38 Goebbels, Joseph, 62, 159 Goffman, Erwin, 138 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 53, 105 Graham, Seth Benedict, 163 grotesque, medieval, 3–4 groups, relationships with individuals, 69–71, 74–76, 80, 139, 149, 153 Haaretz, 94 Habermas, J., 121–22, 126, 132, 137, 140–41 Handelman, D., 8, 18, 122, 144 Hannerz, U., 40 Havel, Vaclav, 61–62, 90, 99, 108–9 Haven in Heartless World (Lasch), 123 health professions, 126–27, 130–31, 135–38 Hebdige, D., 14 Hegel, Georg W. F., 44–45 helping professions, 123, 126–27 See also health professions Hepworth, M., 153 hero identification, 23–28 high culture, 12–13 Hilbert, R., 37, 70, 83 Hitler, Adolf, 62 Homeless Mind, The (Berger), 123 Honecker, Erich, 104–6 Hoxha, Nadyima, 107

Index Huizinga, J., 130 human natural gifts. See physical gifts, triumph of human-caused cataclysms, 43–44 humorous critiques, 13 Hungary cultural resistance, 158 dissidents’ debate, 87–88 exposing collaborators, 91, 95 leadership profiling, 99 metanarratives, 112 Romanian regime and, 98 hyberbolic distortion, 13 identity, search for, 153–54 ideology of culture industry, 50 diminishing of, 31, 33, 37, 76–77 and imbalance of public/private spheres, 155–57, 166 manifestations in official events, 5 and moralist narratives, 112 possible turn toward, 43 rational-technocratic, 16 and ritual symbols, 75 therapeutic, 7 Iliescu, Ion, 94, 97, 99 Illouz, E., 130–31, 134, 153 imaginary flight. See social space, expansion of immanency, 146, 149–51 immigration agencies, 163 India, 40, 48, 55 individual consciousness, 70, 85–86, 108 individual-group relationships, 69–71, 74–76, 80, 139, 149, 153 individuality and anomie, 70–72, 76, 79 in the contemporary public sphere, 147–48, 152–54 rise at expense of Social, 139 individual’s well-being, ethics of, 126, 129–31, 138 Indonesia, 39 industrialization, 125, 129 informants/informers, 87, 90–92, 95, 98, 110 inner experience, 148–49, 152 institutions deinstitutionalization of private life, 123–26

institutions (continued) dependence on public institutions, 138 over-institutionalization of public life, 123–24, 126, 138–39 transfer of functions, 124–27, 129, 132, 135–38 See also family; privacy; religion; work insurance companies, 163 intellectuals, 40–41, 43–44, 60–63 intermediation, 79–80 Internal Revenue Service, 163 interspersing, 13–14 Iran, 82–83 Iran’s Islamic revolution, 82–83 Isaak, Jo Anne, 53 Israel, 55 Japan, 38, 40, 48 Jarocin Rock Festival in Poland, 158 Jaruselsky, Wojciech, 104–5 Jivkov, Todor, 98, 104, 107, 112 jokes as cultural resistance, 161–63 Julian, Vlad, 104 Kael, P., 9–10 Katz, R., 12–13 KDU (The Christian and Democratic Union), 90 Kellner, H., 134 Kenny, R., 136–37 Klemperer, V., 159–60 Kotkin, S., 160 Krantz, Egon, 107 Kumar, K., 128, 161 Labyrinth of Solitude, The (Paz), 4 language, official communist, 158–60 language of the Third Reich, 159–60 Lasch, C., 121, 123, 126, 131–32, 134 Laslett, B., 131 late modernity atmosphere of, 11–12 moral principles of, 129 permanent anomie in, 70–72 psychological dimension, 130 social life compared to modern times, 140 late-modern public sphere. See contemporary public sphere late-modern social substance, 143 175

Public–Private Relations in Totalitarian States late-modern society, crisis of the ritual in. See crisis of the ritual Latin America, 40, 62 Lefebvre, H., 71–72 Lefter, J. B., 60 Legrain, P., 33 Lerner, R., 163 Lewis, Ben, 163 Lii, D.-T., 146 Lingua Tertii Imperi (LTI), 159 Lopez, J., 133 lsaura (Brazilian soap opera), 55 luck, belief in, 18–19 ludic domain, 18–21, 161–63 lustration law, 95, 99–100 Lyman, S., 110–11 Maffesoli, M., 142, 145 Mann, Thomas, 23–24 Marco, Rita, 107 Martial Law Declaration of 1981, 105 Martin, B., 11, 23, 72 Marx, Karl, 41, 44, 54, 161 mass communication. See media, mass masses, concept of, 113–15 Mattelart, A., 55–56 Mattelart, M., 55–56 Mayer, John, 135 Medgyessy, Peter, 91 media, mass American, 38, 49–50, 52–56, 77–78 charisma of, 47–49 cultural codes in, 54–56 and cultural commentaries, 148–49 fictional nature of text, 51–54 and intermediation, 79–80 liberal, in East-Central Europe, 60–62, 64 nationalistic, in East-Central Europe, 57, 60, 63–64 and normality, 77–78 Western bias, 49–51 Western vision in East-Central Europe, 58–60 medicine, field of. See health professions Melluci, A., 142 Menon, S., 5, 11 mentalities, 82 merit vs. destiny, 18 Merton, R., 70 Mestrovic, S., 70–71, 149 176

metanetwork space, 144–45 Michnik, Adam, 105 Middle East, 39, 55, 82, 155 middle-class East-Central European, 61, 63–64 educated/professional, 7, 39–41, 43, 47, 49 families, 125, 133–34 international exposure, 47–49, 53–54 media and popular culture, 7, 49, 53–55 secular celebrations, 73–74 and transformation of spheres, 125 Milea, Vasile, 104 Mill, John Stewart, 33 minuet, compared to waltz, 12–13 modern tribes, 142 modernity, late, atmosphere of, 11–12 modernization, 121, 123–25, 129 moral authority of health professionals, 136–37 moral chaos in detective stories, 4 morality of culture of resistance, 12 moral depletion, 87 survivalists vs. moralists, 109–16 See also ethics of individual’s wellbeing; public moralities; rituals of political purification movies, 9–10, 14 Mudrow, Hans, 107 Mussolini’s Fascist regime, 89 mythology Americanization and, 10 global culture and, 32 of the media, 59 of passive resistance, 109 supranational culture and, 50 weakness/loss of, 43, 71, 73–74, 76 narratives anomie and, 37–38 and imaginary flight, 8–15 in media text, 52–54 Nation, 109, 114 National Council of Studies into Security Archive (CNSAS), 91–92, 95 national culture, 34, 38–39, 42 Nazi language, 159–60 neo-Marxism, 122 networks, 71, 76, 78–80 Newcomb, H., 6

Index Newman, O., 20 Nicholsky, Alexandru, 112 Nieszbitowska, Malgogita, 91 nihilism in popular culture, 5–6, 12 Nixon, Eckhard, 6 normalcy, 134 normality, 77–78 normativity and families, 132–35, 138 novelty, and expansion, 14–15 Obama, Barack, 77 Offe, C., 83 organic solidarity, 139 Orthodox Church of Romania, 97–98 Ostap Bender (fictional character), 160 over-institutionalization of public life, 123–24, 126, 138–39 Pakistan, 39 Paz, Octavio, 4 People, 109, 115 permit-parking procedures in Montreal, 163–64 Persionink, Wladislav, 105 personal networks, 71, 76, 78–80, 141–45, 147–52 physical gifts, triumph of, 21–29 playfulness, 18–21, 161–63 Poland, 87–88, 91, 98–99, 104–5, 158, 161 politics, 131 pollution, 84 Popieluszko, Jerzy, 99 popular culture, 3–29 commentaries, 6–8 disguised as joyful, 4 imaginary flight in, 8–15 nihilism in, 5–6, 20 secular supernatural in, 15–21 triumph of physical gifts in, 21–29 See also under representations popular discourse, 22, 113–15 popular events, 26–28, 151 popular phenomena, categories of, 8 Portugal, 155–56 Preuss, U. K., 83 privacy, 128, 132 See also private sphere private affairs, intrusion in totalitarian states, 155–57 Western states, 163–64

private sphere blending with public sphere, 132, 151–53 diminishing role of family, 125 public/private dichotomy, 121–24, 128 reciprocal relationship to public sphere, 128 role of public moralities on, 124–25, 131–38 weakness of, 123–24 private/public relations, imbalance in. See cultural resistance; private affairs, intrusion in privatization, 161 Profane anomie and, 70 culturalization of, 149–53 and culture, 8, 146, 149 departure from, 109 displacing Sacred, 71 redefinition of, 85–86, 114–15 and regressions into nature, 26 See also Sacred professionalization, 126–27, 135–37 Prost, A., 125 pseudo-professionalism, 127 psychiatric medications, 131 psychology, 134 psychotherapy/psychological support, 124, 126–27, 129–30, 138, 154 public, defined, 148–49 public commissions, 94–96 public events, 26–28, 144–45, 151 public moralities, 121, 124–25, 131–38 the body and, 135–38 families and, 131–35, 138 influence on private sphere, 124–25, 138 and intervention in private affairs, 164 of totalitarian states, 157 public sphere alternative, 161 blending with private sphere, 132, 151–53 common denominator of, 122 as de-sacralized space, 149–50 expansion of, 42–45 late-modern/contemporary (See contemporary public sphere) 177

Public–Private Relations in Totalitarian States public sphere (continued) over-institutionalization of, 123–24, 126, 138–39 privatization of, 124–25, 128–31 public/private dichotomy, 121–24, 128 reciprocal relationship with private sphere, 128 transfer of private functions to, 124–27, 132 public/private dichotomy, 121–24, 128 public/private relations, imbalance in. See cultural resistance; private affairs, intrusion in purification rituals. See rituals of political purification Radojkovic, M., 57 rationality, 15–21, 25–26 rebirth, 84 regression, ceremonies of, 26–28 Reiff, P., 127 religion, 18, 38, 42, 121, 125, 129, 139, 141, 150 changing/reduced role of, 38, 42, 73, 125, 129, 139 culturalized realm and, 150–51 lack in modern Western groups, 69 political manipulation of, 155–56 public/private dichotomy and, 121 solidarity and, 141 See also Bulgarian Orthodox Church; Catholic Church; Orthodox Church of Romania; spirituality; theodicy religious symbolism, 60 See also sacred symbols representations, 6–8, 10–11, 13, 15–17, 19, 41, 70–71, 74–76, 79, 146, 150–51, 153 in anecdotes, 162 collective, 41, 56, 70–71, 74–76, 150, 153 of fault and purification, 84–86 individual, 70–71, 75, 79 of popular culture (See popular culture) of social structure, 146, 148 Ricoeur, P., 84, 96 rituals, 73–76, 80, 151 See also popular events; rituals of political purification 178

rituals of political purification introduced, 83–86 author’s field research, 160 consciousness change, 108–9 dismissal of enterprise directors, 100–3 dissidents’ debate, 87–89 exposing collaborators, 90–92, 95 former leadership trials, 103–8 present leadership profiling, 96–100 public commissions, 94–96 secret police dismantling, 89–90 survivalists vs. moralists, 109–16 Robertson, R., 32 Romania anecdotes in, 162 collective memory, 107 dismissal of enterprise directors, 101–2 dissidents’ debate, 87–88 exposing collaborators, 91, 95 leadership profiling, 96–100 metanarratives, 111–14 news story in, 55 newspapers in, 60 political manipulation in, 61 public commissions, 94–95 revolution of 1989, 92–95, 97 Securitate disbanding, 92–94 self-presentations of high school graduates, 160 supervision of private life, 156 trials of former leadership, 103–4 Romania Libera, 112–13 Romanian Information Security Department, 93 “Royal Highness” (Mann), 23–24 Russia, 105–6, 155–56, 160 Sacred, 8, 18, 41, 45, 57, 69–73, 75–76, 79, 86, 96, 109, 114–15, 140, 145–46, 149–53 anomie and, 70 changes in, and social life, 140 destiny and, 18 dispersal and culturalization, 73, 150–53 move toward from Profane, 109 networks and, 71 popular culture and, 8 profanization of, 114, 152 redefinition of, 41, 85–86, 114–15

Index Sacred (continued) relationship with the Social, 145–46, 149 vulnerable social order and, 72 See also Profane sacred collective mythology, 71, 75–76 sacred symbols, 69, 71, 75–76, 79, 153 SB, 98–99 See also Secret Police Scott, J., 133 Scott, M., 110–11 Seagal, Debra, 52 Secret Police, 87–91, 95, 98–100, 103–4, 113 secular celebrations, 73–74, 80 See also popular events secular eschatology, 63 secular ethics, institutionalization of, 150, 153 secular sacredness, 48 secularization, 121, 125, 128–29 secular-lucidic supernatural, 15–21 Securitate (in Romania), 91–94, 100, 103–4, 113 See also Secret Police self-awareness, 130 self-conscious individuality, 153 self-expression, 49 self-image, 85 self-narration, 153 self-realization, 134 Sennett, R., 121, 123, 128–29, 131, 144, 161 sexuality, 130–31 sex-violence theme in novels, 11 Shilling, C., 135–36 Siklova, J., 88 Simmel, G., 11 Simpson, C., 4, 6 simulacrum apparatus, 79–80 Singapore, 38 Slovakia, 96, 98 See also Czechoslovakia Smith, A. D., 34, 36, 41–42, 62 Smith, P., 115 Social (sphere of ) crisis of, 37, 44 in a global culture, 35 mass media and, 147–49 modern vs. late-modern, 140 objectivation of, 145

Social (sphere of ) (continued) relationship with Culture, 6–7, 37, 43, 53, 74–75, 145–47 relationship with Sacred, 145–46, 149 weakening of, 139–40 social action, 143, 146 social class, 15–16 social control, freedom from, 5, 11, 15–17, 22 social denial, 3 social mobility, 9 social omnipotence, 5 social order, 3–8, 15–16, 19–21, 23, 25, 27–28, 72, 75–76, 84, 97, 109, 131, 134, 156–57 capitalist, 16 cultural response to, 5–8 fallibility of, 3, 8 modern, 16 omnipotence of, 5 rationality and, 20–21 ritualization of logic of, 5 triumph over, 5, 21–29 vulnerability of (See social vulnerability) Western, 7–8, 15–16, 19, 21 social security, 163 social solidarity, 71, 76, 141–44, 147 social space, expansion of, 8–15 social structure changes in East-Central Europe, 56–64 erosion of, 34–35, 40 games of chance and, 19–20 mechanisms of limitation, 9 and world representations, 13 social vulnerability, 3–29 expressions in popular culture, 4–6 imaginary flight and, 8–15 permanent anomie and, 72 physical gifts and, 21–29 rationality weakness and, 15–21 solutions to, 5–6 in Western middle classes, 7 social world, imperfect, 13 socialized medicine, 163 solidarity organic, 139 with popular heroes, 23–28 social, 71, 76, 141–44 soul services, 126–27 179

Public–Private Relations in Totalitarian States South American states, 155–56 South Korea, 38 Soviet Coup of 1991, 53 Soviet Union, 160 spaces private vs. personal, 128 social vs. public, 140 See also collective spaces Spain, 82–83, 155–56 spectacles, 73–74, 76, 80, 151 spiritual support, 126–27, 130 spirituality, 41, 126–27, 129–30 Stanculescu, Victor, 96–97 Stanoiu, Rodica, 91 Stasi, 88–90, 95, 100 See also Secret Police State, 42, 111, 114, 122, 140, 145, 155 See also totalitarian states; welfare state state rituals, 73 Stefanescu, Calin Bogdan, 163 Strinati, D., 10 Sufii performances in Budapest, 158 supernatural, 7, 15–21 supraculture, 34, 36, 39, 43–44, 50, 54 See also global culture surprise and the supernatural, 16–17 surrealism in popular culture, 7 survivalists vs. moralists, 109–16 symbolic acts, 166 symbolic boundaries, 84–85 symbols, sacred, 69, 71, 75–76, 79, 153 Taiwan, 38 Tenbruck, F. H., 31–32, 44 texts, 47, 51, 56, 147, 152 Thailand, 2009 crisis in, 54 Theoctist Armasu, 97–98 theodicy, 5, 18, 41–42, 63 “Theory of the Leisure Class, The” (Veblen), 18–19 therapeutic narrative, 153 Thomson, K., 125 Timisoara riots, 97–98, 104 Tisch, Harry, 107 totalitarian states cultural resistance in, 155, 157–63 fall of, 155 intervention in private life, 155–57 public morality in, 157 totems, 24, 42, 150 180

Totok, W., 58 Touraine, A., 154 Tournier, Michel, 162 transcendental concepts/beliefs, 18, 23, 69, 71, 149–51 transfer of functions from private to public sphere, 124–27 Troeltsch, Ernest, 142 Tudoran, D., 58 Turner, B., 137, 153 “22” (newspaper), 113 Twitter, 71 unemployment agencies, 163 United States. See America universality, 40–41, 43–45, 141 urbanization, 36–37, 125 Ursu, G., 113 values, civil, 150–51 Veblen, T., 18–19, 23 Vincent, A., 125 vision, 84 vocabulary, new conceptual, 146–47 Vulcanescu, Mircea, 113 vulnerability, 3, 5–7, 15, 20–21, 28, 45, 72, 135, 153 Walesa, Lech, 99, 105 waltz, compared to minuet, 12–13 Weber, M. charisma, 22–23 imperfection of the world, 25 nihilism, 6 personal networks, 141 rationality, 16, 20 theodicy, 5, 18, 41 Weimar Republic, 62 Weintraub, J., 161 welfare state, 9, 69, 76–77, 150 Weltanschauung, 26, 129 “Western genre” (movies), 10, 14 Western society anomic trends in, 37–38 blending of spheres, 132, 151–53 and cultural imperialism, 33, 35–36 cultural resistance in, 164–65 hero identification in, 23–28 ideological weakening, 31, 76–77 international media programs, 49–56

Index Western society (continued) intervention in private affairs, 163–64 media orientation in East-Central Europe, 58–64 modernization in, 125 public/private dichotomy and, 123 and search for identity, 153–54 social order in (See social order) youth culture, 165–66 Wilgoz, Stanislaw, 98–99 Wolf, Christa, 87–88 wooden language, 158–60 work, institution of, 125, 144 work-corporative model, 144

writers as dissidents, 87–88 Wuthnow, R., 129–30 Youth, 24, 39, 115, 158, 165–66 youthful appearance as oppressive ideal, 137 Atonement Symbolic acts Evocative acts, 86 Balance/Imbalance between, 135, 155 Therapeutic narrative, 153 Self-narration, 153 Self-image, 85 Self-expression, 49 Self-conscious individuality, 153 Vulnerability, 72

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