LITERATURE

1. Tempus est iucundum cum iuvenes templum Veneris petunt. Iove hominem creante pulchrum inquit dea corpus gaudio fruiturum decet varium. quoniam duas facis species, et gladium et vaginam, molesta fuerit una cupiditas. ne vivant ut bos tantum vaccam petens vaccaque bovem! genus superius tribus saltem sit modis: corpus alterum cupiens, cum vir in muliere ardet. corpus simile cupiens, ubi gladium cum gladio gaudet, idem de vagina. corpus ambo cupiens, amore sine discrimine mi dilectum, quo phallus deam ovans puerum puellamque colit, de cunno idem. species tantum alteram cupiens deis indigna, sed gaudium melius varium sicut in Olympo. ita locuta est. cui Iuppiter rex ex solio assensus, nec dis placuit facinus in Venerem libidinis liberalem. contra, cum sagitta cor ingreditur, gratissimum

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colere: praestat libidinem deam laudantem sese corporis iussui dedere quam iudicantem stultum reverentiam negare. laetus est dies cum puella purissimo ritu oblato iacens ecce ait defututa sum, quae noctu bene dormit. magna deae sapientia quae gratia etiam culum in ara sacrificium factum accipit. culum ubique contemptum amoris instrumentum habuit, quo cavo redempto et mari et feminae licet quacumque carnis parte matrem adorare. o quam nobilem aram piissima meretur, quae gavisuris abundanter dat nec cupienti invida, immo potius laetissima cum laetissimis. id est creatos amare, id est mater sine condicione diligens.

2. Nonne rides, ingrate, donaque dehonestas? qui cum ingenuus tuus culus virum cupit peccatum dicis corpusque tibi negans abicis? vox culi vox deae. tu autem colebas

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morem contra cupiditatem. alia erat oratio, alia vita. natus es filius Iovis ad patrem agnoscendum, sed bovem pro magistro ducis. ecce bos esto sed scito: quod genus superius praebet non est mens, sed culus. nam ratio ingenium consilium, quibus te maiorem animalibus putat aliis, usu stultissimo te facit asinum, cuius e cavo modo merda venit. sed culo pro amore libidine cupiditate uti homini tantummodo fuit. melius enim culum intuere portam humanitatis maximam, quae una corporis pars nos superiores facit. igitur amabo plus reverentiae tuo praebeas. tristis vita, quae deam mentula modo aut cunno veretur, dum toto corpore licet sacrificium omnium sanctissimum. ingratus peccat cui libenter libido ac cupiditas datur

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et vaccam laudat. quin beatus in gramine iaces florumque species intueris tam multas? vide innocentiam rerum. cum Phoebus agrum illustrat omnis color gratus.

3. Erat Venus cum Mercurio super rosarum lecto, quae pulchra genibus nixa gladium dei lambebat dum alter gemens gemmam dearum per capillos capiebat laetam virili fortitudine gaudentem. erat deus cum Venere postea stante genibus ille nixus nectar lingua diligenti sorbens, dum deae canentis gemitus avibus musica. iacebant paulo post et terra tremebat libidine sua fortissima amantes inflammato corpore sudorem calorem clamorem miscentes. dies Phoebo lucente plus morabatur ne fremitui finis esset, sed maiores cupiditas flammas accendebat. supremo demum sole, tamquam Vesuvius violenter ignescens ardentissimum

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dirumpitur fluctum, ecce deus sese oblitus fremit et semen abundans erumpit in Veneris aram maxime opertam quam vehementer inundat. quae guttae vase sacro effluunt in terram carissimum floribus donum. diu duo dei stellas intuentes alter alterum amplectantur, cum repente Mercuri ait Venus quid agis? quid de orbi? sed deus oculos claudens cunctatur, qui amatae cervices osculans noli quaerere inquit de creatis, amabo fruere mecum gaudio, musa musarum, carpe gladium corpus virtutem servi tui. et Venus surgit: quid est? nonne tam multis donis gaudent? quid tandem deest?

4. MERCURIUS: Eheu, ita sese res habent: postquam illis omnia dedisti pro omnium laetitia hominum, toto redempto corpore, ingrati surrecti sunt dicentes cupiditatem tuam non esse voluntatem novi cuiusdam dei.

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VENUS: Mene prodiderunt? o scelera, quid audio? quis est novus deus?
MERCURIUS: Invidissimus, regina, si ita fari mi licet. qui veterrimus iam non futuit, ergo iussit neminem alium futuere. cuius barba iam tam magna ut phallum tegat, quem audiens nova turba omnia dona repudiat tua.
VENUS: Mehercule, crudelis! quid dicunt audientes? loquere!
MERCURIUS: Culum contra naturam esse. commercium modo licere inter virum et mulierem nuptum datos, tantumque ad filios gignendos.
VENUS: Quid? me pro histrione ducunt? quae natura sine Venere? natura sum ego!
MERCURIUS: Sed ita est, optima, novus deus nolit hominem gaudentem, homo novus sese tui pudet.

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VENUS: Damnamini, ingrati! aestuo tanta ira. qui sunt isti circenses? si voluissem virum modo mulierem, mulierem modo virum cupere sic fecissem. nec mi hominem creandum fuisset: iam est asinis talis vita. si voluissem modo mentulam cunnumque adhiberent, tantum futuentes ad gignendos liberos, mehercle, iam satis murem ac muscam creare.
MERCURIUS: Quid facies, dea? iube quod pareo.
VENUS: Qui sunt sacerdotes huius dei? veni, Cupido, audi! pectus unius quisque tange altissima sagitta. confunde superbiam: dum praedicabunt culi odium culi eorum cupidi erunt inter se.
MERCURIUS: Bene eveniat, nam tristes umbrae isti homines per orbem ambulant.

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VENUS: Ne incepi quidem, Mercuri! proditio petit ultionem!
MERCURIUS: Audio, maxima!
VENUS: Ambulanto per orbem homines mutato sexu! Ita sit!
MERCURIUS: Quid? quo modo? quis?
VENUS: Lascivam videbit ingratus quidam puellam magnis mammis ac podice, quam valde cupit, bene, bene. ecce mulierem inflammatus petit, ecce videbit mammas podicem: et phallum! estne mulier aut vir? est omnino cupiditas liberata, Venus vindicata. ergo sciunto non esse partum qui feminam maremque definit, sed Venus. nam corpus phallatum si Veneri tamquam mulier placere cupit, in ara Veneris mulier est. vaginatum corpus quoque templum meorum ut vir petens vir acceptum. non est odium, Mercuri, non est invidia.

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5. Ita dea mente formidabili decrevit ad superbiam ingratorum puniendam non speciem sed rationem sexum facere. tunc musis deisque omnibus in templo amoris supremo coactis una de re veneria statuerunt: (a) species veneria vel sexus apparens vocatur corpus carnis natum duobus modis: species feminae, species maris. (b) cupiditas veneria vocatur voluntas liberae libidinis ut corpus animae datum tribus modis: alterum cupiens, simile cupiens, ambo cupiens, quamquam inter modos ceteri sunt medii. (c) mos venerius vocatur usus donorum Veneris quod ad cupiditatem attinet tribus modis: mos secundus, qui cupiditatem sequitur; mos contrarius eam negans, cum e.g. vir mulierem petit quamquam virum maluerit; mos varius, qui libenter et contra et secundum cupiditatem optat. (d) ratio veneria vel sexus verus vocatur animae sententia

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de se ipsa in templo Veneris quod ad optimam speciem deae laudandae attinet: mulier, vir, neuter quicumque sese tales sentit. (e) oratio veneria vocatur imago quam anima de se ipsa expressis verbis pingit: oratio secunda, cum rationem veneriam sequitur; oratio contraria cum negat, e.g. si ratio veneria mulier est sed homo sese metu odii exilii caedis virum vocat. (f) modus venerius vocatur modus corporis carnis nati: corpus immutatum, simile ac natum; corpus mutatum, cum speciem alterius carnis sumit sed membrum natum venerium manet; corpus permutatum, cum etiam membrum alterius sexus iuvante medico sumit. (g) status venerius vocatur corpus statu cupito retento vel assecuto: vir natus, mulier nata, vir novus, mulier nova. quibus enim e septem partibus (h) vita veneria fit. statutum est.

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6. Deus barbatus unam vitam veneriam permittit: speciem maris superiorem femina, solam cupiditatem alterum corpus cupientem, solum morem secundum, nullam rationem vel orationem veneriam praeter speciem carnis, solum corpus immutatum, nullum statum nisi natum. Romani nonnunquam contra deam vitam agebant, nam mater tolerantiam iubebat dum lex prohibebat libidinem inter duos viros liberos. simile cupienti servum petendum erat. sed novi dei homines Venerem totam inquinabant. quae multis modis sese vindicans vindicata vindicanda vindicatura nunc libidine victura Mercurium rursus vocat. cui deae mos gratissimus mos varius est. itaque decernit deum lascivum probare age inquiens ad genua, vide nunc,

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cum modo volo mihi cunnus est, mihi cum volo penis. nunc honora, Mercuri, ore tuo phallum tuae dominae. at Venus, ait ille, cupiditas mea alterum membrum cupit neque is mos mihi notus. ecce notus erit inquit dea ridens eiusque faciei maximo alapas phallo ducens. age lambe! deus erubescens mammasque Veneris Barbatae amplas intuens oboedit, qui deam ovans paulatim sese denuo obliviscens morem venerium nobilem liberalem generosum facit, varium omni vitae gratum praeter odium invidiam stultitiam, dum felix Venus vindicata piissima mater natura redempta gemit: deus esto. non decet bovem quod decet Iovem.

ESSAY

What is wokeism, or political correctness, or cancel culture? Why should anyone defend it? It is curious, in fact, that no one does. The terms are used largely by their opponents. Indeed, for over 30 years I have heard the mantra; the evil, malignant forces of political correctness, a motley mix of spoiled, overprivileged university students, crank professors, and ignorant celebrities are somehow destroying free speech, free enquiry, and the Enlightenment itself. How true is this caricature, and how concerned should we be? Let me catalogue the most frequent complaints I hear about wokeism:

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What is Freedom of Speech?

There are two definitions one can use for freedom of expression:

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It becomes evident, when studying the moral panic over wokeism, that conservatives are not talking about the first definition at all. Indeed, if anyone is violating that principle, it is the conservative side. The UK government has repeatedly passed legislation restricting the ability to protest, allowing for protesters to be placed under surveillance without a warrant, or even, if non-citizens, to be deported without due process — merely for participating in a protest, even if they themselves committed no violence. Similarly, in the US, it has been conservatives who have repeatedly passed legislation limiting LGBT+ education in public schools, banning books from school libraries, and threatening to prosecute teachers for teaching the “wrong” viewpoint on history. In Florida, teachers can be

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imprisoned for five years merely for having a book in their classroom banned by state officials. In Canada, conservatives have passed provincial legislation barring civil servants from wearing religious symbols. These are the faces of actual, legislative restriction on free expression, backed by the full power of the state. Yet apparently it is the left and its wokeism that is the threat to free speech.

Prosecutions for hate speech in nearly any Western country are the exception rather than the norm. In Canada, only out-and-out Holocaust denial usually qualifies. In the UK, even open terrorist sympathisers generally stay out of prison, unless they are proven to have organised specific acts of violence.

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But it is certainly true that your employer can fire you for saying something they didn’t agree with on Twitter. It is certainly true that a once-beloved children’s author like JK Rowling can see her star fade because of her views on trans people. It is certainly true that some speakers are not welcome on some university campuses. You will be called racist if you say colonialism is a good thing or if you mock someone’s accent, or if you say that one ethnic group commits more crimes than others. You will be called sexist if you make fun of a female politician’s clothes, or opine that maybe rape victims bear some responsibility.

It appears to be the argument of conservatives that these accusations – of racism, of sexism, of homophobia or transphobia – either should not be made, or should be

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made in a muted, relatively harmless form. But there should be no social consequences. No speaker should be disinvited, no professor denied tenure, no one fired because of what they say. Some conservatives go even further. For them, merely getting the accusation of racism or sexism, if they don’t agree with it, constitutes a violation of freedom of speech.

Just whose freedom matters? Does not the recipient of the conservative’s criticism have the right to respond?

If they don’t, it places conservatives in a highly privileged place. If a professor employed at a university expresses a controversial, transphobic opinion, and free speech requires that the university give her tenure anyway, that means, in effect, that the university is obligated to give her the implicit endorsement it conveys. It means that the university,

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not just the professor, must bear the costs of that opinion, whether it be lost students, lost grants, angry letters, or the loss of interested researchers.

Why is the professor free to say what she wants, but insists that the employer bear the consequences of her words? Why is the employer required to go to bat for the conservative professor? Does the employer not have freedom to express their views of the professor’s conduct?

A moment’s thought makes it clear – if the issue is social consequences, rather than specific action by the state, then true freedom of speech is impossible. You simply can’t prevent people from expressing themselves in response to someone’s opinion unless you’re willing to circumscribe their freedom of expression.

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According to conservative logic, conservative speakers must always be welcomed by student unions, and paid for, even if the students do not wish their funds and their platform to be used in this way. The implicit argument seems to be that conservatives’ freedom of choice comes at the expense of liberal students; they are not, apparently, permitted to refuse a speaker. They are required to grant a platform to views they find offensive.

But isn’t offence critical to a broad liberal education? This is a repeated argument conservatives make, that liberal students are barricading themselves in a woke bubble and refusing to let in contrary arguments that might puncture their self-esteem.

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It is a curious argument for conservatives, since elsewhere they argue that it is liberals who are offensive, by pointing out historical wrongs freely and daring to say negative, even if truthful, statements about historical figures. Indeed, this is the fourth point above, which will be dealt with later in this essay. So, when liberals offend conservatives, it’s a bad thing and wokeism gone wild, but if conservatives offend liberals, well, that’s just education at work, and liberals should shut up and listen without protest, even paying for the privilege.

But an argument can be hypocritical and still be correct. Why shouldn’t liberals be required to hear conservative opinions, even if offensive? Are they so weak that they cannot bear it?

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On the surface, it might be tempting to give students the entire marketplace of human ideas, past and present, and let them choose for themselves which ones they want to accept. But even the most ardent free-speech advocate must concede there have to be limits to this. Obviously, no one believes Nazis should be allowed to speak freely at universities, even though there is little chance today of them drawing more than a trivial hearing. More pragmatically, few would believe that Islamist extremists should be allowed to freely give speeches and hand out flyers on student union property or receive student union funding. There really have been terrorist attacks carried out by young men radicalised in UK universities – enough that governments of countries like Pakistan have made complaints to the UK about the extremism their students learn there.

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But surely, a free-speech advocate could claim, there must be limits to the limits? Arguing that trans women are not women, or that gay marriage should not be legal, or that immigration should be reduced, or that Churchill was not racist, or that colonialism was a positive force, or even that cancel culture is a pernicious threat, surely these are not arguments on the same plane as Islamism or Nazism?

Who gets to decide these questions, after all?

Does the student union not have this right? Do they not have their own budget for speakers, their own rooms, their own promotional materials? And if they wish to disinvite a particular speaker, is that truly censorship, or is it editorial judgement? No sane person would argue that offensive opinions are impossible or difficult to find, after all, a few minutes online can find virtually any opinion you can imagine, and more than a few that you can’t.

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The anti-woke argument only starts to make sense if you believe that liberals are obligated to listen to arguments that push the boundaries of racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. That is to say, the right wing is worthy of a certain level of ideological privilege, and is entitled to a place, not merely in the public sphere, but in private spheres as well. This is not freedom. It is not the free marketplace of ideas. It is ideological indoctrination at state and student expense.

The Left Behinds

Education cures racism. Surveys repeatedly show a strong correlation between education levels and propensity to support immigration, multiculturalism, and efforts to combat racism. This has led to a full-scale inversion

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of the support bases of political parties. Once Left and Right were defined by income lines. The poor, who tended to be less educated, supported the Left, while the Right drew its support from the educated rich. Now the roles are nearly reversed. It is the Right that enjoys the support of the less educated (at least among the majority ethnic/religious community) and the Left that is caricatured as representing the cultural interests of the rich, and their greater tolerance for different skin colours, accents, languages, and cultural practices.

As far back as the 1960s, there was a defensive anger held by “white ethnics”, descended from Polish, Irish, or Italian immigrants to the US, who held a lot of resentment against Black Americans and began to vote Republican, despite the racism and discrimination their own parents and grandparents had suffered.

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As the working class in country after country began to see its jobs disappear, its wages decline, its unions disintegrate, its social services slashed, and its community dwindle, it became easier and easier for its white members to believe it was because of the attention given to minorities. Trade agreements really did provide the educated classes with cheaper and higher-quality imports, at the expense of the workers who no longer had access to good jobs without an education.

Yet even this argument I am making will be dismissed as snobbery. Indeed, the rhetoric routinely caricatures anti-racists as somehow being part of a cossetted, metropolitan elite. In the UK, for example, a useful exercise is to substitute the words “pro-immigration” for every time you read the phrase “metropolitan elite”; in practice the former is nearly always what is meant.

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Indeed, we have reached the point where opposing racism is increasingly seen as a luxury reserved for the upper classes. The white ethnics of the 1960s were jealous of the attention paid to the black desire for civil rights and were convinced it was a hidden way of leapfrogging their status. Opposition to busing, affirmative action, and welfare formed the centrepiece of this movement.

It is, indeed, almost a cliché that the “white working class” has become increasingly alienated from left parties due largely to racial issues. It’s worth noting that that phrase is an odd one. No one ever speaks of the black working class, or Asian working class, or any working class of colour. In the US, by some definitions people of colour are a majority of the working class. But only white people, in this telling, count as working class, and their class concerns seem only to be relevant if it relates to their whiteness.

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White working-class concerns are typically about immigration, the European Union, multiculturalism, affirmative action, equality, history, statues – essentially cultural concerns. Indeed, the rhetoric of the media makes it sound as though the white working class has little interest in wages, working conditions, housing, education, or social programmes, except to be resentful that nonwhites are on the receiving end.

What is working class about opposing immigration? Nothing; if there were, the black working class would oppose it as vociferously as the white; it does not. It is, in fact, a problem of less educated whites. They are the ones likely to turn to racism because of their lack of education.

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Left parties, who have a habit of romanticising those in poverty, often struggle to deal with this. Some believe the solution is to trumpet class-based concerns more loudly. If they have a radical enough economic programme, the theory goes, the white working class will forget its race-based concerns and turn back to income-based concerns. But the political career of Jeremy Corbyn is the most brutal testimony possible to the failure of this approach. In the 2017 election, he did better than expected because he promised to give the racists what they wanted – a hard Brexit. In 2019, he moved away from this position, and was annihilated for his pains. His successor, Keir Starmer, is offering neither a radical economic programme nor any return to unrestricted immigration from the EU – and is thus holding consistent polling leads.

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In the United States, opposition to welfare would seem an odd thing coming from the working class, the very income group most in need of generous social programmes. It only makes sense when you realise that white voters consistently overestimate how much US welfare spending goes to people of colour – by their accounts, most of it. The resulting hostility is very intense, and is arguably the bedrock of the Republican coalition, and has been so since the 1960s. Bill Clinton only brought Democrats to power in 1992 by promising to “end welfare as we know it”. He also deliberately twisted the words of a little-known black rapper, Sister Souljah, to be seen taking a culture-war stand against blacks. He went so far as to interrupt his campaign to sign the order to proceed with the death penalty against an underage, mentally retarded black man accused of murder.

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And it worked, didn’t it? Clinton won that election. “The era of big government is over,” he bragged in 1996, coasting to re-election. But the era wasn’t over, of course, it was subsequent Republican presidencies that expanded the state. Today, far-right parties across the Western world regularly call for an expansion of social programmes. The large state was never a threat to the left-behinds; it was the fear that people they regard as aliens and foreigners would make use of its benefits.

This explains many contradictions. In the Brexit referendum of 2016, political scientists discovered quite quickly that there was a direct correlation between how badly a region was hit by the Conservative-led government’s austerity

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programme and its vote for Leave. Yet, when given the chance to vote directly on the austerity programme in the UK general election of 2015, one year earlier, the same voters handed the Conservatives a majority. Why? Why would the same voters express contentment with the system in 2015, and then seek its overthrow a year later?

The answer is that both votes were anti-austerity, but neither blamed the government of the day for its own policies. Immigration was the target of both. Starting with the expansion of the EU in 2004, immigration gradually came to be blamed for nearly all the problems facing the UK. School overcrowding, health care overload, deficits, rising welfare costs, crime, housing shortages, falling wages,

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even traffic were the fault of immigration. Parties and journalists alike found that nearly any focus group, on any topic, would beeline for immigration.

In 2015, the UK Labour Party was in an impossible position. The only way to cut immigration as the voters wanted was to leave the EU, which the party knew was not in the UK’s interests. They tried to square this circle by promising vague “controls on immigration”, going so far as to issue mugs with these words. Voters saw through this; they voted for the Conservatives, which despite the austerity and destruction they had inflicted on the country, had also offered an apparent cure – a referendum on exiting the EU, to cut back on immigration from Eastern Europe. The rest is history.

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Conservatives’ repeated attempts to caricature anti-racism as some kind of privilege reflects, in the end, their own intellectual insecurity. Being the party that defends wealth and privilege is, for most, uncomfortable – and in many countries is no longer a clear path to electoral victory. Far better to make an ersatz self-portrayal as a “party of the people” by trying to disguise what is really a race-based appeal as a class-based appeal. Far easier to sound like a defender of the working class than a defender of the downtrodden white male.

The Western Canon

A legend has grown in modern society. It is the idea that there is a list of classics that has stood the test of time for centuries, starting with the Bible, added to by ancient

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Greece and Rome, and then on through the European and later American intellectual traditions. Little of importance came from the rest of the world. At most, there are some Arab scholars who kept classical learning alive during the Dark Ages, and there are some interesting religious or fictional poems from India and China, but most of the world’s learning is Western, and most of the same titles have been studied for centuries. Any attempt to dilute the intellectual influence of this canon, or cease teaching its works in universities, is an insidious attempt to displace timeless values with intellectual flabbiness aimed more at supporting students’ self-esteem than training their mind.

Nearly every word in the above paragraph is a bald-faced lie, a lie that has been perpetuated carefully, even cunningly.

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For starters, the distinction between East and West is, historically speaking, both artificial and relatively recent. The Bible was written by ancient Hebrews, who were culturally similar to many other Middle Eastern peoples of that era. The influence of Egyptian, Babylonian, and Iranian ideas on the Old Testament has been extensively documented. Chauvinists try to sidestep this by claiming that North African and Middle Eastern learning prior to the Islamic era has nothing to do with those regions in the present. Modern Islam is held to be not the heir to one of the world’s oldest civilisations, but an offshoot of Judaism started by a primitive people and now dismissed as inward-facing and backward. Ancient Eastern learning is culturally appropriated as belonging to the West.

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The Bible is a dominant influence on Western civilisation. But neither Jesus nor any other historical figure in the Bible was white, despite usually being depicted as such in Western art. The Bible was the work of Middle Eastern peoples with clearly Middle Eastern views. The Old Testament speaks favourably of the Iranian Empire, which Greek writers felt was a dictatorial, alien, Eastern enemy (most English translations call it the “Persian” empire, to elide over the fact that ancient Persia and modern Iran are the same country and speak the same language). The books of the Apocrypha tell of a successful armed rebellion raised by Jews of the second century BC against Western (Greek) rule, seen as pagan and alien (conveniently, the Apocrypha is not part of the Protestant Bible today). The New

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Testament generally tries to steer clear of politics, but there is no denying its depiction of the Roman Empire, not as a founding civilisation, but a pagan tyranny. And even many Western historians, from Edward Gibbon on down, have gone so far as to make the claim that Christianity – a faith of clearly Middle Eastern origin – was precisely what led to the downfall of the Roman Empire and the centuries of the middle ages, and only its weakening with the Reformation made progress possible again.

The ideology of the Right cannot accept that Western civilisation is but one of many; its primacy underpins the conservative intellectual project. One thought that drives conservatives up the wall is simply to point out that Egypt is physically located in Africa. No, they retort, the ancient

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Egyptians were not black and therefore modern Africa cannot claim in any way to be an heir to Egyptian civilisation. Many are the sneers made at “Afrocentrism”, while few are the jibes at the idea that ancient Egypt was a Western civilisation.

Modern universities sometimes also teach that philosophy and science began in ancient Greece. Yet scientific studies were underway in India and China at the same time. Moreover, there was plenty of cross-pollination between them. Indian writings made their way to Iran and from there to Greece, and Greek ideas did the same in the other direction. The similarities between the Upanishads and early Greek philosophical ideas were, if anything, better known then than now.

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Indeed, the intellectual history of the West itself reveals that the chauvinism of modern times did not exist as recently as the eighteenth century. The expansion of the West in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was motivated, more than anything else, by a hunger for closer relationships, both in economic and intellectual terms, with India and China, from which Europe was isolated by the Islamic states of the Middle East. European scholars as late as the eighteenth century were eager to get their hands on Asian philosophy and literature.

There was never a fixed, immutable canon. All cultures have proffered a constantly evolving set of classics whose titles waxed and waned in popularity over the centuries. The idea of a fixed canon only arose in the late nineteenth century. Even here, one can see lists from then had more

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non-Western titles on them than those drawn up in the mid-twentieth century. In the 1980s, a conservative book, The Closing of the American Mind, was hailed for its denunciations of political correctness; but in fact, the Western mind had closed a century before. The West was determined to forget its own heritage, to forget what it had learned from other cultures, to insist that it alone was the source of learning, wisdom, and truth.

The idea that these non-Western traditions should be discarded is a key part of the Western tradition – but a relatively recent one. One of its originators was Immanuel Kant, typically hailed as one of the greatest philosophical minds who ever lived. He was a bald-faced racist, arguing for white superiority based on completely hare-brained pseudo-science with no evidence worthy of the name.*

The consequences of the world having a fixed, largely Western canon are so obvious they ought not need to be stated, but they do. If most of the world’s intellectual value comes from the West, how is it possible to argue that Western culture is not superior? Indeed, this is a regular argument of the Right; some cultures are superior to others. Invariably, it is the Western – often the English or American in particular – held to be the superior one.

The Right tends to shy away from saying that the people who produced this culture are superior to other peoples. When accused of racism, they hit back with charges of wokeism, political correctness, and cancel culture. Yet it is impossible to escape this conclusion. Nor, historically, did educational systems around the world try to escape it.

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The promulgation of these ideas was the very foundation of colonial control. Lord Macaulay, in his notorious Minute on Indian Education, wrote that he desired a ruling class for India that was “Indian by blood, but English in culture and temperament”. Schools throughout the British Empire would teach English history, English civilisation, English traditions. The line of ideas, once again, would be believed to have come from the Bible to Greece and Rome and thence to England.

(Even within the West, the chauvinism is immediately apparent; note that I said England above; not Britain. Scotland, Wales, and Ireland are afterthoughts in most published histories of the UK, except insofar as they were invaded or conquered by England. Indeed, the history

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books are full of references to the “British Isles”, no matter how deeply offensive that term is to the western of the two isles, and the centuries of bloody repression that was necessary to keep it British.)

The point of Macaulay’s educational system was to deprive the colonies of their intellectual self-confidence. Their civilisation was held to have nothing of value. If the British could conquer them within a century, they clearly had little to contribute. They had to learn the values of a superior people and accept the benevolent overlordship of their masters.

Even the fall of the colonial empires has not interrupted this proud self-congratulation. Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Frantz Fanon, and many other leaders

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of the independence movements, so the theory goes, owe their ideals and revolutionary fervour to the Western tradition, to the ideas of Locke and Montesquieu. By this logic, Gandhi would not have sought independence if he had not studied in the UK. The fact that he spent much of his life studying the Upanishads, the works of Kalidasa, the Koran, and many other Indian and Arab classics is simply ignored by his white admirers, who want to adopt him as one of their own – Indian by blood, but English in culture and temperament. The nonwhite person is not even allowed to be the architect of their own liberation. Gandhi’s philosophy of ahimsa was a wholesale rejection of the values of the West, from militarism to industrialism to mercantilism. Yet it is portrayed as a product of his education in England, not the ideas of a man deeply a product of his time and culture.

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No one who has studied the philosophy, art, and literature of non-Western cultures believes that they are in any way inferior to those produced by the West. The trouble is that few in the West have done this, including educators up to university level. Philosophy departments, in particular, seldom consider anything non-Western to even qualify for the term philosophy. Few consider anything amiss when a professor who has never studied anything non-Western pontificates about how Kalidasa or Chanakya aren’t philosophers at all, but mystics, an opinion that would be easily dispelled by actually reading them. Even the name Confucius is an anglicisation of his real name, Kong Qiu.

A graduate of philosophy from an Asian university will be expected to know about early Western thinkers, from Plato and Aristotle to Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius to

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Augustine and Aquinas. But how many Western philosophy graduates have even heard of Chanakya or Kalidasa? How many could explain the differences between the six schools of Brahmanic thought? How many know what yoga is, or could explain the differences between Daoism and Confucianism? Or the significance of Meng Ke? They are not considered ignorant for not knowing these things. Entire spheres of knowledge and learning, that took millennia to create, are simply dismissed as irrelevant.

Actually even Western learning is not always put into the best context. Plato’s Republic maintains its position of reverence in the Western canon. But of all states ancient or modern, the one closest to Plato’s ideal, with a supreme leader and a moral police to enforce “virtue” – is the

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Islamic Republic of Iran. The idea that august Plato has more in common with modern-day Islamist extremists than modern Western democracies is not something conservatives like to tell themselves.

Conservatives jeer at attempts to “decolonise the curriculum”, especially when the targets of decolonisation extend not only to literature and history, but to the sciences and even mathematics. How can mathematics be a product of colonialism? But it is, right from primary school. Children around the world study the Pythagorean Theorem, and therefore simply assume that one of the most fundamental results in geometry was discovered in Ancient Greece, and only in Greece. But Pythagoras was not even the first “Westerner” to discover the theorem; it can be found

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in Babylonian writings over a thousand years earlier. It has also been mentioned in Indian texts that antedate Pythagoras, and there are traces of it in early Chinese writings as well.

Every schoolchild learns that the Greek letter π is fundamental to the geometry of circles. Why π? The Greeks themselves did not use that letter as a geometric constant. It was not employed for that purpose until 1706, by the British mathematician William Jones. It was fashionable in 18^th-century Europe to use Greek letters for mathematical constants; and because whatever Europeans used, the world must use, it has become the standard.

The Greeks were, again, not even the first to discover this ratio; it has been found in both Babylonian and Egyptian texts written centuries before. It can even be

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found in the Old Testament, although rounded off to 3. Its presence in Indian, Chinese, and Iranian mathematics – using symbols from the writing systems of those languages – goes untaught and unremembered. No one says the exact phrase mathematics was invented by white people, but everyone learns it implicitly. The fact that Pascal’s Triangle, routinely taught to high school students, was discovered in China centuries before Pascal’s time is something students are not expected to know. Westerners call it Pascal’s Triangle, and anything else is cancel culture gone wild.

Programmes that attempt to highlight the contributions of people who aren’t white men – gender studies, women’s studies, area studies – are the primary target in the Right’s culture wars. Indeed, merely attempting to teach

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the history of racism itself is now deemed “critical race theory” and is illegal to teach in many American public schools. For the Right, education is not about learning, or the free expression of ideas, but about the free expression of conservative ideas.

The Fall of the Legends

During the wave of Black Lives Matter protests in the UK, someone graffitied the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square. The statue itself was not damaged, but the caption on the base, which read simply “Churchill”, had painted below it the words “was a racist”.

Cue the howls of fury from the tabloid newspapers and Conservative ministers. Churchill was an icon, a symbol of resistance to the Nazis, a wartime hero. An attack on him feels like an attack on Britain itself.

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There is a key problem with this argument, and that is that the graffiti was correct. Churchill really was a racist. That is a proven historical fact. Moreover, he was racist even by the standards of his time, staunchly opposing independence, or virtually any concession to home rule for India, sending the Black and Tans (basically a motley crew of bandits) into Ireland, and a fierce supporter of imperialism and empire, well into the 1950s.

It becomes clear, however, that conservatives do not want their legends sullied with the truth. Churchill is a legend. He is the symbol of the UK’s heroic resistance to Nazi Germany. To attack him, even with attacks fully grounded in the historical record, is to a conservative an attack on the very spirit of Britain. And – ironically for an ideology that

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insists on its right to offend people of colour – white British people may brook not only no insult, but no truth that is ideologically inconvenient.

Cristoffa Corombo had faulty geography and thought he could sail across the Atlantic and Pacific without stopping – impossible with the technology of the time. He then tried to make up with his failure to find China by enslaving the indigenous peoples of Hispaniola. He began centuries of war and exploitation in the Americas. Possibly the disaster that enveloped the continent (as much as 90 percent of its population perished) would have happened no matter what European first came to the Americas. But had someone with a stiffer resistance to slavery made the first trip, could a lot of suffering have been avoided?

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This is still a controversial statement. The legend of Corombo is deeply cherished. The legend says that he had a more English name, Christopher Columbus, that he not only discovered the United States (whose future territory he never set foot in), but he even proved the world was round (actually proven by Erastothenes millennia before). This legend began to be taught in American schools in the nineteenth century. The purpose of the story was not to face the truth but to avoid it. The European exploration of the United States was in fact carried out largely by British navigators, representatives of a country the US had only recently won its independence from. So, educators decided to teach children about an Italian navigator employed by the Spanish crown, and a legend was born.

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Many more legends abound. John A. Macdonald was the first prime minister of Canada, one of the relatively few heroes that country possesses. Without his steady leadership Canada might never have taken the form it did. But there is no justifying his record towards Aboriginal peoples. He drove them off the land and conceived of the genocidal policy of residential schools. Aboriginal children were forcibly taken from their parents, had their names changed, and were raised in boarding schools where they were beaten, starved, left exposed to disease, and forced to abandon their languages for English. Even after Canada signed the Genocide Convention in 1948, it continued this policy, in clear violation of the treaty, which classifies forcible removal of children out of their ethnic community as genocide. It remained in effect until 1996. Macdonald had been its creator.

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And yet, there was fierce and vocal resistance when some of the many schools and streets named after Macdonald were renamed. Our first prime minister, a casualty of the woke brigade.

Renaming things. Taking down statues. The common thread behind the resistance to the idea that maybe, just maybe, some legends don’t deserve their legendary status basically considers the suffering and pain they inflicted on people of colour to be an unavoidable, even accidental, artefact of history, to be safely ignored.

Underlying this argument is the implicit belief that only white views matter. White people’s legends, white people’s pride, a version of history in which they are the actors and drivers of history, is the history. So, Edward Colston’s role

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as one of the leading businessmen in the history of Bristol is what matters, not that his profits came from the slave trade. Black people are simply an irrelevance. Their demands to remove the statue of a murderous slave trader are an insult to the historical comfort of white people. History is written by the victors, and victory they must have.

As I mentioned earlier, it is highly ironic that, when it comes to freedom of speech, white people demand the right to express their opinions freely, without worrying about insulting people of colour, but are astonishingly touchy when it comes to hearing verified historical facts about figures they have been taught to admire. The racial hierarchy is evident. Freedom of speech is a one-way street, reserved for white people and white privilege.

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Often the defence is made that it is unfair to apply modern values to people who lived generations ago and had different standards of right and wrong. By that logic, King Charles I should not have been executed; the divine right of kings was conventional political belief at that time and had been so for centuries. King George III and Lord North, both of whom were well within the mainstream of British political values of the late 18^th century, should not be blamed for their treatment of the American colonies.

Even modern values are highly in dispute. According to literally centuries of Russian tradition and policy, Ukraine is part of the Russian Empire and always has been. What right does the woke brigade have to decide otherwise? Nor is this a hypothetical example — this is literally the Russian

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justification for the invasion. Indeed, it is common, even standard, for conservatives to jeer at governments with nonwhite heads who claim that democracy and human rights are not in accordance with their values. Yet white heads of state who violated these values, often with consequences that continue to cause harm in the present day, are to be given a pass.

Patriotism

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This poem by Walter Scott gives the conventional conservative opinion on patriotism. There is also the notorious quote by President George H. W. Bush:

My country, right or wrong. Especially wrong. Loyalty to one’s own tribe, one’s own country, family, ethnicity, religion, whatever – this is considered one of the greatest of all virtues, and to betray your country an unforgivable sin, even if it is done to save human lives.

The true horror of this viewpoint is evident to a continental European – this is basically the primary moral argument in favour of genocide. German soldiers who fought

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in the Wehrmacht often knew, or suspected, that they were fighting for a regime whose primary political goal was to commit atrocities. But they fought for the Fatherland – patriotism was considered more sacred than human life itself. Waffen-SS and Einsatzgruppen soldiers didn’t just fight for genocide, they committed it, and they often genuinely believed they were doing the right thing. So did the Soviet soldiers who committed mass rape and ethnic cleansing after the war ended. So did the Ustase soldiers who massacred Serbs – and the Serbs who came for revenge, fifty years later.

And yet, centrist thinkers such as Jonathan Haidt have argued for the superiority of conservative morality. According to Haidt’s thinking, liberal morality is based

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on just two pillars – care and fairness. Conservatives boast five – care, fairness, in-group loyalty, authority, and sanctity. Because five is greater than two, or something, conservatives apparently have the superior morality.

Thus, John Kerry was widely pilloried, when he ran for US president, for having testified in 1970s congressional hearings that veterans had told him about atrocities they had witnessed and even conducted in Vietnam. Justice (atrocities are a bad thing) and honesty (they should be admitted if they happened) were considered less important than loyalty to the United States, even if this loyalty meant covering up or denying war crimes.

One might be forgiven for saying that, regardless of circumstances, committing and covering up war crimes is a monstrosity. But not to a conservative; to them

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the demands of patriotism come first. Thus, Chelsea Manning is considered a criminal and spent years in prison for releasing documentary proof of US war crimes in Iraq, supposedly because this information threatened the safety of US servicemen. The greater point that US servicemen had committed war crimes was less important than Manning’s reveal of this fact.

Many times, President Barack Obama was accused (falsely, as it invariably turned out) of carrying out “apology tours”. Indeed, apologising for historical wrongs – an action that costs no money – sticks in the conservative soul, even if there is incontrovertible proof of the atrocity and its impact on the descendants of its survivors. Prime Minister David Cameron went so far as to visit the site of the 1919 Amritsar massacre and yet stubbornly refused to apologise, which would have cost the taxpayer a grand total of zero.

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To this day, there is probably at least as much anger at Jane Fonda, whose crime was posing for a photo with North Vietnamese soldiers, as there is at the US politicians and generals who literally ordered war crimes. Henry Kissinger recently celebrated his 100^th birthday, feted and toasted by politicians and pundits all over the world, with his ties to war crimes not only in Southeast Asia, but in Angola, Chile, and many others considered just another part of his statesmanship. Nothing is more important than serving your country. If you must burn the skin off children because it is apparently in your country’s interest, then burn the skin we will do, and we will condemn not the war criminal, but the war criminal’s critic.

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“They always blame America first,” Jeane Kirkpatrick chanted at the 1984 Republican convention. The Democrats, she claimed, were the party of critics of America, those who had the temerity to point out America’s crimes, instead of engaging in whataboutery, the patriotic thing to do. Only the acts of our rivals and enemies count as crimes. Another reason for Jeremy Corbyn’s historic defeat was his alleged “unpatriotism” – he had spent a career critical of British and American foreign policy. That, apparently, shows a lack of loyalty to the nation, a treason in spirit if not in law.

Behind the conservative anger there is, as usual, a conservative fear. They believe that someone who spends a lot of time criticising their country’s foreign policy does so out of a dislike of their country, and that is one thing

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they cannot accept. If someone spends a career writing articles accusing Americans of atrocities, doesn’t that mean they hate America? By that logic, of course, pointing out Japanese crimes during World War II means you “hate Japan” (and indeed, Japanese conservatives do say this). But it is just as possible to argue that someone who truly loves Japan will want to be honest with the country and face the truth over what really happened, to make genuine reconciliation and healing possible.

This leads conservatives into contortions. Putin’s justification for his war in Ukraine is very similar to the US justification for the war in Iraq in 2003; both claims are essentially bogus and always have been. But the idea that the good guys – US and UK – could ever be held to the

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same standard as a rogue state like Russia sticks in the craw of conservatives. They believe that their countries are special, and a true patriot does not hold them to the same standard as another country. If they invaded Iraq, it must have been with the best of intentions, simply because they were American intentions. Never mind that this could be – and was – used to justify many abuses and many deaths, which did little in the end to enhance American security and a lot to undermine it.

Moreover, this identification of foreign and defence policy with a nation’s very soul only seems to apply to official actions taken abroad by the state. Conservatives are notably unshy about criticising domestic actions of the state – regulations and taxes being favourites. Notoriously,

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Sarah Palin accused Obamacare, entirely falsely, of planning euthanasia of the elderly through “death panels”. Indeed, entire professions of public employees, from civil servants to teachers to social workers, are roundly criticised for their actions. Anyone except, apparently, those with authorisation to use force – police, intelligence, and military. Foreign aid to desperately poor countries is assumed to encourage dependency and subsidise corruption, but huge quantities of military aid to countries like Iraq and Afghanistan – despite their highly questionable effectiveness – are considered essential to Western security and therefore beyond reproach.

Conclusion

Perhaps the biggest casualty of the conservative backlash to wokeism is that many liberals have now flocked to distance themselves from feminism, anti-racism

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and LGBT-rights. Defund the police is criticised by nearly as many politicians on the left side of the aisle as the right. Few politicians even on the left dare call for increases in immigration. The wave of increasingly authoritarian legislation in the UK gets no promise of repeal from the Labour Party, constantly worried about appealing to socially conservative “red wall” voters. In the United States, the state of Florida marches deeper into dystopia almost weekly, but there is only retreat from Democrats on culture war issues. Pundits, even left pundits, instinctively adopt the tone and criticism of conservative rhetoric, playing up the stereotype of ignorant but militant college-aged activists every chance they get.

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We must never forget that the foundations of opposition to wokeism are based on ignorance – the will to remain in ignorance, to believe myth rather than truth, to believe that one’s self-esteem comes from superiority, and that disloyalty is worse than atrocity. These are values that should be repellent to a lot more people than they are.

It is time to take the gloves off. The problem is not that people are accused too frequently of being racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, or transphobic. The problem is that they are not accused enough.

ARTICLE

Jahr für Jahr werden inzwischen in Deutschland Prominente, meist Politiker, der λογοκλοπία überführt, des geistigen Diebstahls, und zwar in Form des Plagiats. Meist geht es um Publikationen, die nicht der eigenen Feder entstammen, so etwa 2021 seitens der heutigen Außenministerin A. Baerbock,¹ oder um unlauter erworbene akademische Titel. Ob jemand Eigenständiges veröffentlicht hat oder – man verzeihe den schlichten, aber sich anbietenden pun – sich mit fremden Federn schmückt, das lässt sich bei näherer, vergleichender Analyse unschwer klären. Wer ohne literaturwissenschaftliche Vorbildung die Debatten über diese Plagiate verfolgt, könnte daher davon ausgehen, dass es stets eine klare Trennlinie zwischen Original und Kopie, zwischen Leistung und Nachahmung gibt.

Kaum ein Text dürfte einen solchen Laien daher mehr überraschen als Musaios’ Hero und Leander², ein großenteils aus den Werken anderer Autoren kompiliertes Gedicht, und trotzdem ein Zeugnis dichterischer Kreativität. Ganz offensichtlich ist die scheinbar so eindeutige moderne binäre Opposition Plagiat-Original untauglich, um Musaios gerecht zu werden. Über die individuelle dichterische Qualität hinaus lohnt sich die Beschäftigung mit diesem Gedicht, denn seine Rezeption ist ein Musterbeispiel für Subjektivität und Fragwürdigkeit literarischer Geschmacks- und Werturteile.

Die Geschichte von Hero und Leander ist bis in unsere Tage immer wieder neu erzählt worden. Die frühesten Überlieferungsspuren finden sich Jahrhunderte vor

Musaios. In der griechischen Literatur lesen wir die erste gesicherte Erwähnung der Geschichte, die ursprünglich eine lokale Volkssage gewesen sein dürfte, in zwei Epigrammen von Antipatros von Thessalonike (A.P. 7, 666 und 9, 215)³, der um Christi Geburt unter Augustus in Rom lehrte. Vergil liefert eine Kurzfassung, ohne die Namen der Protagonisten oder den Schauplatz zu erwähnen. Er setzt also offensichtlich die Einzelheiten der Geschichte von dem iuvenis, der in den Fluten ein Opfer der Grausamkeit Amors wird, als dem Leser bekannt voraus (Georg. 3, 258 – 263).

Bei Goethe findet sich eine andere Kurzzusammenfassung, in einem Distichon in den Römischen Elegien (III, 13f.):

Eine erste detaillierte uns überlieferte Beschäftigung mit der Geschichte liefert Ovid (Heroides, Briefpaar 18 und 19). Auch andernorts, etwa in den – ganz nahe beim Schauplatz der Erzählung, nämlich in Tomi, verfassten – Tristia bezieht sich Ovid auf die Erzählung, und zwar, als er das gefrorene Schwarze Meer beschreibt: (III, 10)

Die bedeutendste und beste Fassung dieser Erzählung stammt von einem Unbekannten. Das 343 Hexameter umfassende Kleinepos Τὰ καθ᾽ Ἡρὼ καὶ Λέανδρον verfasste der spätantike ,grammaticus‘, γραμματικός, Musaios.⁴

Wer war Musaios, „der (mit) den Musen Vertraute“? Den Namen des vorhomerischen Sängers trug er entweder von Geburt an oder hatte ihn sich als Dichternamen zugelegt. Unsere Informationen über ihn sind spärlich. In der handschriftlichen Überlieferung lesen wir den wenig aussagekräftigen Namenszusatz γραμματικός, eine Bezeichnung, die seit hellenistischer Zeit ganz allgemein auf (gebildete) Schriftsteller angewandt wurde. Das Epyllion ist stark von Nonnos (5. Jh. n. Chr.) beeinflusst und wirkte auf Kolluthos (5. bis 6. Jh. n. Chr.). Das Gedicht ist also vor 500 anzusetzen. Zwei Briefe des Prokopios von Gaza (etwa 465 bis 528), Nr. 48 und Nr. 60, haben wahrscheinlich Musaios zum Adressaten.⁵

Die Handlung: Hero, nach dem Willen ihrer Eltern Priesterin der Aphrodite in Sestos am Nordufer des Hellesponts, lernt auf einem Fest Leander aus Abydos von der anderen, asiatischen Seite der Meerenge kennen. Die beiden verlieben sich, eine Heirat scheidet aus. Leander durchschwimmt nun nächtlich die Meerenge, um sich mit ihr, die alleine in einem Turm wohnt, zu vereinen. Als die Öllampe, die Hero als Wegweiser für ihren Liebhaber aufgestellt hat, in einer Sturmnacht erlischt, verirrt er sich und ertrinkt. Am nächsten Morgen entdeckt sie seine Leiche und stürzt sich vor Gram ins Meer.

In der Antike war die Strecke Sestos-Abydos die engste Stelle des Hellespont, heutzutage ist sie es aufgrund von Küstenerosion nicht mehr.⁶ Am 3. Mai 1810 durchquerte

ein moderner Leander die Meerenge: Lord Byron. Er schwamm von Sestos aus und benötigte 70 Minuten. “The immediate distance is not above a mile, but the current renders it hazardous; – so much that I doubt whether Leander’s conjugal affection must not have been a little chilled in his passage to Paradise.”⁷ Byron verfasste danach sein Gedicht “Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos”.

Die Erzählung des Musaios ist gradlinig chronologisch und schnörkellos: « sans digression, sans hors-d’œuvre, sans longueur ».⁸ Alles, was sich nicht auf die beiden Liebenden bezieht, bleibt unerwähnt, eine Beschränkung, die das Werk von anderen epischen Gedichten der Kaiserzeit unterscheidet.⁹ Auch die Götter treten – mit Ausnahme Eros’ – weitestgehend in den Hintergrund.

Aber noch einen weiteren ,Protagonisten’ hat die Geschichte: die Lampe (λύχνος¹⁰), die Hochzeitsfackel, die Leben und Liebe spendet und schließlich entzieht. Schon in rein quantitativer Hinsicht spielt sie eine fundamentale Rolle für das ganze Werk, da sie von Anfang an immer wieder erwähnt wird. Besonders tritt das hervor, wenn man Musaios’ Epyllion mit anderen Gestaltungen derselben Erzählung vergleicht, etwa der Ballade „Hero und Leander“ Friedrich Schillers. Die Lampe ist das zentrale, alles beherrschende Symbol. Sie steht für Liebe und Leben der beiden Liebhaber, sie “bridges the positive and negative aspects of the tale”.¹¹

Zunächst ist alles auf ihre Begegnung und auf das Liebeswerben Leanders zugeschnitten. Dann, nach dem Wintereinbruch und den mit ihn verbundenen Risiken

des Hinüberschwimmens, folgt die Schilderung der dramatischen Ereignisse, eine Struktur, die auf moderne Kritik gestoßen ist, obwohl sie künstlerisch und narrativ überzeugt. Die Liebe löst die Kettenreaktion aus, die mit ihrem Tod endet.

Musaios setzt, wie bereits Vergil, bei seinen Lesern die Kenntnis der Geschichte voraus. Nicht auf der äußeren

Handlung, sondern auf dem Seelischen liegt der Hauptakzent. Deshalb scheut er sich auch nicht, bereits am Anfang, zum Abschluss des Musenanrufs, in homerisierender Diktion den traurigen Ausgang vorwegzunehmen (V.14f.):

Weit geht er über die aemulatio, etwa im Sinne des Verhältnisses Vergils zu Homer, hinaus und bedient sich der Technik des Flickengedichtes, des cento, jedoch ohne spielerische oder parodisierende Absicht: Er arbeitet

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wie ein Mosaikkünstler, der ein fremdes Mosaik auflöst, die Steinchen einzeln oder im Verbund entnimmt und sie kühn zu einer ganz anderen Komposition zusammenfügt.

Oder, sprachwissenschaftlich gesehen: Während heutzutage Dichter in der Regel das Vokabular der allgemeinen Sprache, im Ausnahmefall eigene Wortschöpfungen verwenden, verfährt Musaios zwar einerseits genauso, benutzt aber vor allem die Wortschöpfungen, Wendungen und Motive anderer Autoren und schafft – als Dichter, als ποιητής – aus dem Fremden Eigenes, und zwar für Leser, die in der Lage sind, das zu goutieren.

Neben zahlreichen heidnischen und christlichen Autoren ist es vor allem Nonnos, den Musaios für sein Werk verwendet, bei dem er zahlreiche Wendungen und Verse borgt. Ihm

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schweben aber auch zwei Szenen aus der klassischen griechischen Literatur vor, auf die er sich bezieht: die Begegnung zwischen Odysseus und Nausikaa und die der Liebenden in Platons Phaidros.

So spricht Hero Leander mit Worten an, mit denen Odysseus seine eigenes Los beschreibt.

„Sehr viel habe ich erlitten und viele Mühen erduldet auf den Wellen und im Krieg.“

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„... wie auch ich jetzt zu deiner Strömung und zu deinen Knien komme, nachdem ich viele Mühen ertragen habe.“

Hero zu Leander (V. 268f.):

In V. 135ff. sind eine Passage aus der Odyssee (VI, 149f.) mit Passagen aus dem Lukasevangelium (Lk. 1, 26ff. sowie 1,41 ff.)¹³ kunstvoll miteinander verwoben:

„Liebe zweite Kypris, zweite Athene, denn ich setze dich nicht Frauen gleich, die auf Erden wandeln, sondern Töchtern des Zeus, des Sohnes Kronos’ vergleiche ich dich. Selig, der dich zeugte, und selig die Mutter, die dich gebar, äußerst glücklich der Schoß, der dich beherbergte. Erhöre mein Flehen, erbarme dich meines Verlangens, das mich beherrscht.“

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Zwar hat das Gedicht über Jahrhunderte hinweg die Dichter inspiriert, aber ein so stilisiertes, artifizielles Gebilde behagt nicht jedem Leser, zumal es einer traditionell wenig geschätzten Epoche antiker Literatur entstammt, die, so Manfred Fuhrmann, „immer noch im Schatten einstiger Ausgrenzungen“ steht, „wohl nach wie vor die am wenigsten bekannte Episode der europäischen Geschichte“.¹⁴ Im 19. Jh. war seine dichterische Qualität in Deutschland umstritten. Von Goethe geliebt,¹⁵ von dem Gräzisten Franz Passow hoch gerühmt,¹⁶ stieß das Gedicht auch auf scharfe Ablehnung.

Dass solche Geschmacksurteile und Verdammungen in großem Umfange in die Fachliteratur eingedrungen sind, ist schwerer nachvollziehbar. Das Gedicht erfreue sich –

so kein Geringerer als Wilamowitz, von hoher Warte auf das Werk herabblickend – „seltsamerweise“ „immer noch eines gewissen Renommees“. „Der unverwüstliche Stoff, der immer wieder die Dichter reizt, ist ganz ohne Gefühl und Erfindsamkeit abgehandelt. Weder des Meeres noch der Liebe Wellen rauschen darin, sondern nur die Hexameter rollen ihren monotonen Gang, einerlei ob sie Sehnsucht oder Sturm schildern wollen.“¹⁷

Von einem Autoren der Provenienz des poeta doctus Musaios einen frischeren, ursprünglicheren Erzählstil zu erwarten ist unangemessen, genauso wie es im Bereich der Kunst verfehlt wäre, ein Gemälde von Jacques-Louis David nach den Kriterien des Naturalismus zu beurteilen. Der Vergleich ist nicht zufällig gewählt, sondern liegt nahe angesichts

der „etwas starre[n] Anmut, die dem Gedicht eignet“,¹⁸ einer Charakterisierung, die auch auf Gemälde des Klassizismus passen würde.

Es ist nicht verwunderlich, dass ein Text, in dem so viel verwendet ist, was aus anderen Sinnzusammenhängen stammt, seinerseits Lesarten nahelegt, die von der erzählerischen Oberfläche abweichen.

Die Symbolik der Lampe muss Lesern zur Zeit der Entstehung des Epyllions genau wie bei uns heute den Gedanken an den Prolog des Johannes-Evangeliums nahegelegt haben. So wie der Evangelist zu Beginn seines Evangeliums vom Licht (φῶς) des Logos spricht, findet sich ein Hinweis auf das Licht schon im ersten Vers der Erzählung des Musaios:

Während irdisches Leben, irdische Liebe erlöschen, spricht Johannes von einem ganz anderen Licht, dem Licht des Logos, das der Finsternis trotzt: καὶ ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν [und die Finsternis hat es nicht ergriffen/begriffen] (Joh., 1,5).

Der Ablauf der Erzählung ist allegorisch, im Sinne der neoplatonischen Tradition, gedeutet worden. Die Phasen der Erzählung hätten tiefere Bedeutung: Der erste Teil (V. 28 – 231) gelte dem Leben der Seele im Himmel vor der

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Geburt, Teil 2 (V. 232 – 288) dem Leben der Seele auf Erden. Es folge im letzten Teil (V. 289 – 343, Wintereinbruch bis Tod) die Erlösung der Seele von den Fesseln des Körpers.¹⁹

Der Stoff wurde in ganz Europa zunächst durch Ovids Heroiden, dann auch durch die Lektüre des Musaios verbreitet. Es erschienen Übersetzungen und Adaptionen des Gedichtes in zahlreiche europäischen Sprachen. Der Stoff drang auch in die Volkslieder ein, man denke an das deutsche Lied von den beiden Königskindern. Eine Erzählung, die Jahrhunderte zuvor als örtliche Legende am Hellespont entstanden war, kehrte in die Volkspoesie zurück.

LITERATUR

REFERENZ

Dieser Aufsatz befindet sich auf Folium IV, 2023 I, von The Carolingian, und besteht aus 19 Schnitten (sections). Für Referenzzwecke wird folgende Zitiermethode mit Beispielen empfohlen:

Nachname, Vorname: Titel (The Carolingian, Ausgabe, Folium, Schnitt, Link), Besichtigungszeit.

Vollständig: Wurm, Christoph: Musaios, Hero und Leander. Tradition und Originalität in Musaios’ Werk (The Carolingian 2023 I, fol. IV, sec. 12-13: thecarolingian.com/c23.html#f4), Aug. 2023.

Abgekürzt: Wurm, TC 2023 I, f-IV s-12-13 hic, Aug. 2023.

ESSAY

In the beginning was the Family. Mother, Father, siblings. Adam and Eve plus offspring. Then came the Clan, relatives of parents and relatives of relatives. Gradually the circle grew. Then came the Tribe. ‘We are all of the same seed’. The Twelve Tribes of Jacob in Egypt, all seeded by Abraham and Sarah, by Isaac and Rebekah. Then came the Ethnicities with their common history, traumas, myths and victories. Although not necessarily of the same seed, we speak the same language and understand each other, not only by the choice of our spoken word but also by our Commandments that explain the meaning of this world. The Visigoths, the Vikings, the Vandals. The Celts, the Angles and the Saxons. ‘We know how our God created the World and what He wants us to do.’

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The major faiths abolished all the smaller deities that came before them and provided us with new narratives, explanations and promises as well as with a sense of worldwide brotherhood and community. Christendom, the Jewish Diaspora and the Umma. The nations came later. Political constructs of power and allegiance, often uniting and embracing competing tribes by force. And finally, as we climb higher, getting closer to the snow-covered peak of the mountain of human consciousness, we see below us the entire global family of man. Sapiens in all his rich diversity and all her fascinating shades of physical appearance. All of us are threatened by the same problems of climate change and population growth. All of us are nibbling at the raft that we are sailing on.

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These defining concentric circles form our identities, our sense of who we truly are and what we might be able to become. They also tell us which of these circles are important to us. Are we Spartans or Greeks first, are we Basque or Spanish primarily, Cornish or British? It is a landscape of competing hierarchies. Not everyone sees himself as a world citizen. As in many African states, inhabitants may e.g. not primarily see themselves as Kenian but as proud members of the Maasai tribe. And then there are those for whom the patriarchal Clan and its honour are the only law. Don Corleone. The Lebanese Mhallami. All territory outside the Clan is nothing but potential prey, to be defeated and subjugated. Nation states are an irrelevance. ‘Tax levying governments who enlist our sons are the enemy’.

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The modern Western perspective of libertarian and egalitarian thinking is by no means universal. Strangely enough, we Westerners appear to become a declining and self-doubting minority all of a sudden, having risen from the humble foundations of our Judeo-Christian heritage and having climbed well beyond the tree line of human consciousness: Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic. Does this combination of factors qualify us for the acronym WEIRD or at least to be the odd ones out in the wider global context? How helpful is our own ‘enlightened’ perspective today and how realistic are our assumptions that the majority of the world population should want to follow our ‘shining’ example? They may well aspire to the abundant harvest that keeps flowing from our mindset, but do they really want to be like us?

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While Westerners see themselves as free roaming individuals with few loyalties and even fewer beliefs to consider, this perspective is by no means universal. The traditional laws of family, faith and tribal chiefdoms can be all-consuming, determining the biographies of millions, if not billions. To onlookers from the outside, our Western concept of individual freedom and choice may seem strange and decadent, if not outright immoral. The Western shopping basket on the other hand, resulting from that mindset, appears to be simply awe-inspiring and thus alluring to many.

To what extent is the objective of bringing peace and Western democracy to the Middle East a mere indication of our ignorance? Will the mindset of the inhabitants of

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Tripoli and Benghazi, whose cities crumbled under American and European bombs, become more accepting of the Western principle of democratic pluralism? How willing are their Gods to consider man-made parliamentary compromises instead of eternal divine law? Traditional, non-WEIRD societies have clear and time-honoured ideas of the role of family, men and women. Freedom of choice does not often enter into it. Compromise can be seen as weakness in a world of clear division between right and wrong, halal and haram.

How did we come to be the WEIRDest civilization on this planet? Joseph Henrich, Professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University suggests that it was the Roman Catholic Church, quashing pagan practices

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such as polygamy, arranged marriages and above all, marriages between relatives, which the Church was redefining as incest. It was a new interpretation coined by the Church in the 13^th century, meaning ‘un-chaste’. Which groups of individuals were suddenly deemed unsuitable as marriage partners under the new rules of the Roman Church? Second, third or even fourth cousins? By the 11^th century the Church had forbidden them all. Even widows of departed brothers or of expired fathers were no longer acceptable. Consanguineous families were condemned and so was marriage between Christians and Non-Christians. All this was a dramatic departure from pagan tribal custom. And being of a consensual nature, the new Christian form of marriage (I do!) advanced the position of women, if only marginally.

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Marriage beyond the boundaries of the clan even inspired staged tragedy. Romeo and Juliette, belonging to rival clans, were secretly married by Friar Lawrence in Verona. This example of a Christian and Catholic code of conduct of consensual and non-consanguineous union is a novelty in European civilisation and, at least according to Joseph Henrich, contributes to the humble beginnings of the WEIRDest civilisation ever. From now on personal biography and personal achievement begin to define individuals more and more. It is no longer primarily clan adherence or group identity that tells them who they are.

And what applied to human beings, also applied to the new knowledge they acquired. It no longer stayed within the clan, the secret society or the monastery. It began

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to travel away from its originator and led to open discussion, to new synergies, thus creating progress through dialogue. After Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton, the possibility of advancing scientifically and technologically in so many areas of knowledge seemed to gain momentum. The concept that progress could be engineered by enlightened human effort, became part of the WEIRD mindset. With the arrival of nation states in Europe, the legal framework for (intellectual) property, education, industrialization, international trade and domestic commerce would facilitate the systematic application of all that advanced knowledge. Corporate research and development finally became the engine of technological advance.

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It seems particularly note-worthy though, that WEIRDest societies do predominantly have a Protestant heritage. After Martin Luther started his Reformation in 1517, Gutenberg’s new printing press (1450) suddenly had plenty of work to do. Translated bibles were published in vast quantities for ordinary, literate folk, so that they could read for themselves and work out their own form of Christian fellowship. Schooling was therefore deemed to be important in Protestant countries. Reading and writing skills seem basic to us today, but it started in a systematic manner in those territories for which ‘Sola Scriptura’, the Bible Alone, became the reforming motto, guiding people away from the feudal nature of prescriptive Catholicism.

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Observers like Max Weber suggested that there may also have been a Protestant work ethos at play, amplifying these new currents of individualistic thought by interpreting the Bible in a radically new manner. Some sociologists speak specifically of the power of Calvinist belief in divine predestination, suggesting that God chooses his favourites ahead of their lives fully unfolding. Whether one was amongst His Chosen few, whether one was amongst the righteous, as described in the Old Testament, could be measured against the benchmark of personal worldly success, as expressed so very graphically in Psalm 1, praising the virtues and the ‘fruits’ of those who take pleasure in the laws of the Lord.

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‘That person is like a tree, planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever they do prospers.’ (Psalm 1:3)

Thus John Davison Rockefeller (1839-1937) humbly described his own accrued riches as God’s money. ‘God gave me my money. I believe it is my duty to make money and to use the money for the good of my fellow men, according to the dictates of my conscience.’ Philanthropy is the logical consequence of this type of thinking. Piety and frugality, as practised by the creative and entrepreneurial elite of the post-reformation period, would typically lead to reinvestment of profit into productive capacity and not only into ostentatious splendor. This Protestant spirit established itself primarily in WEIRD countries. It was a phenomenon

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of changing consciousness beginning in the regions of Northwestern Europe initially, as well as in the new overseas territories under Protestant management.

If the distribution of Science Nobel Prizes, awarded from 1901-2020 can be considered an indicator of the investigative creative potential of civilisations on this planet, then we may well want to ask how the sum total of 646 prizes have been distributed geographically to their respective laureates over those past 120 years. More than 60% of these prizes have gone to English speaking countries, 80% to predominantly Protestant nations and, according to the UN Human Development Division, more than 95% to scientists from Western societies. Is our ethnicity the root cause of our ‘success’? Are we more intelligent than the rest? It seems an unlikely proposition and smacks of outdated historical mindsets.

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How have the WEIRD nations been able to engineer the best socio-economic conditions for scientific success? Was it sheer historical coincidence and therefore totally unintentional? A fluke, resulting from decentralisation and competition amongst the new centres of knowledge and production? Such new cultural conditions however had considerable downsides, leading to systematic exploitation and the creation of a new proletarian class. These consequences were certainly not conducive to personal happiness or to right livelihood.

Needless to say, every success carries within it the seedcorn of its own destruction. What rises, will eventually fall. The seedcorn will eventually become the withered Ear Of Wheat. Starting in the 15^th century, the new technological strengths

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in navigation allowed European exploration and discovery, from the Portuguese voyages by caravels down the African coast, all the way to the Far East, from the Spanish discovery of the New World 1492 to their first sighting of the Pacific Ocean on the East Coast of America in 1513. Slavery, colonisation and genocidal slaughter followed almost immediately, the sugjugation of ‘native savages’ and with it the exploitation of their natural resources. It was a display of human nature at its worst, made possible through technological advantage.

It has been a long tragic journey of discovery from Lucy’s cave in East Africa to the penthouse apartments in New York. The enterprising and profit-seeking spirit that eventually created the Empire State Building and

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the WTC Twin Towers on the Island of Manhattan represented a toxic cocktail of complexity and internal contradiction. Is there perhaps a hidden metaphorical connection to the failed completion of the biblical Tower of Babel?

The European Scientific Revolution changed the hitherto merciless equilibrium of nature with its formerly near stable populations. Medical understanding from the Renaissance onwards gradually reduced infant and child mortality, thus contributing to a slowly unfolding population explosion which eventually led to unintended environmental degradation, resource depletion and the threat of global climate catastrophe. Soon after the discovery of the New World, Iberian surplus populations began to migrate across the Atlantic.

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Centuries later, gradually growing Western affluence and our medical progress in family planning technology eventually enabled the developed nations to slowly reduce their birth rates, after the death rates had already fallen significantly several generations earlier. Social scientists called this emerging trend Demographic Transition. It was a new phenomenon leading to declining populations in Western Europe after WW2. Critics have suggested that the affluent nations have lost their will to reproduce their own populations, that they have somehow grown tired, decadent and self-centered. Have the West Europeans lost their vision and given up on themselves? Are they still willing to defend themselves and to speak and act in pursuit of their own vital interests?

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The poorer parts of the planet, however, the non-WEIRD world, have experienced no such tiredness and no such dramatic demographic change. Large families are considered a blessing. The clan and the village will provide. Eternal laws and the local patriarch need to be obeyed. ‘The ancestors want to be reborn’. The wild river of procreation needs its bed. Western demands to build dams against such dangerous floods to control mother nature smack of neo-colonialism. And so new surplus populations in low-income countries keep rising and need to flow as part of the life force of old. Progress does indeed have unintended consequences.

Sub-Saharan Africa alone currently boasts a population-doubling time of a mere 27 years. The entire continent of Africa produces a net population increase of 37 million

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annually. That is a surplus of over 100,000 every single day. It is an addition of human life, representing the size of the entire population of France every two years. Where will they all go? The deserts of the Sahel have been expanding south for a long time. Overgrazing has damaged a fragile ecosystem. The colonial exploitation of mineral- and slave-rich Africa of earlier centuries has unleashed unintended whirlwinds which may well turn into massive sandstorms, coming to haunt the rich colonisers of old. The finely balanced traditional equilibria of nature were tampered with, almost imperceptibly to start with, by those well intentioned scientists who wanted to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge and make a better world. From our humble beginnings in the garden of Eden, we were clearly designed to be disobedient and curious. It made us WEIRD and ‘successful’.

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In fact, it made us so successful that WEIRD technology is now available anywhere in the world. It made us so successful that, ironically, we have become utterly dependent on the tribal suppliers of petrol and gas. It has made us so successful that Western inventions like cinema, telephone and television have created a level of global transparency about the actual living conditions anywhere on this planet. As a result tribal surplus populations have begun travelling to the ‘self-advertising’ islands of extraordinary affluence in Western Europe and North America. Ironically, the travellers mostly arrive in transport vessels that were once invented in the West. Are they coming to take back what was stolen from them? The West European philanthropic welfare systems must seem like the proverbial ‘streets paved with gold’. To the villagers in

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Afghanistan and beyond, the idea of a libertarian welfare state is something quite unheard of. There are provinces and entire lands on this planet where clans and warlords demand strict obedience in exchange for their protection. Our Western successes and our ways of thinking certainly act as powerful magnets.

WEIRD societies believe in higher education for both sexes with participation rates often well over 50%. The academic study of human history has created new levels of awareness about the colonial past of many European nations. This has also instilled a sense of collective guilt and self-loathing amongst educated decision makers. And while this can lead to healing and reconciliation, as it perhaps should, it can also become paralysing and self-destructive. To what extent does the new iconoclastic ‘cancel culture’ movement,

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toppling monuments and sculptures, contribute to cooperation and mutual tolerance across the social and ethnic divide of any nation? Why is Michelangelo’s marble Pieta suddenly an expression of racism? And how can mathematics and the sciences in general be considered racist? It remains to be seen how we will be able to live with the strange consequences of our success. Are we reaping a storm?

As explained above, the Western model of development is based on non-tribal organisation. Migration from local medieval villages within Europe towards the liberating towns nearby was a first move away from the pressures of parochial dominance. Guilds and town councils, the Catholic and the Protestant churches were increasingly

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organised on callings, career paths and achievement, less on family allegiance. Cities grew in size and ushered in dramatic social change. Schools and universities, large scale manufacturing, trading companies and banks sprang up, creating professional networks of an entirely new kind.

‘Should one employ one’s brother-in-law or the best candidate in the job market’? The most successful societies have favoured the latter approach, thus contributing to the optimum allocation of resources. It is a decision in the name of efficiency. But is it not also an approach that gives way to cold rationality, against kinship allegiance and the warmth of the family? It is an operating principle that has made us WEIRD. Today, nepotism is frowned upon and against all principles of corporate compliance. Sometimes it is even

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a punishable crime, although by no means entirely outdated. The rational Western consensus tears families apart, because job mobility is paramount. For some, IBM stands for ‘I’ve Been Moved’. The reign of unfettered market forces has atomised families and created a growing number of singles’ households in Western society. It has turned care homes for the elderly and for the dying into profitable growth industries. It has even dreamed up prospering pet hotels for the itinerant rich. Are we all increasingly reduced to becoming lone factors of production or at best isolated human resources?

The Scientific Revolution in Europe also advanced its armaments sector. Modern weaponry, artillery and cruise missiles, including nuclear, chemical and biological

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warfare, the sophisticated means of sea and air combat are to a large extent the brainchild of Western technology. After two industrial World Wars, killing more than 115 million people globally, contemporary destructive potential has morphed into a life-threatening overkill capacity, alarming the entire planet. MAD stands for ‘mutually assured destruction’ with a global stockpile of currently at 13,400 nuclear warheads.

Nearly three quarters of the major weapons exporters of this world are based in WEIRD countries, contributing to an arms trade that fuels tribal uprisings and local civil wars, generating new refugees all around the world. Regular Western interventions in the Middle East are a powerful reminder of unenlightened power politics, often targeting

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former colonies and aggravating the existing tensions between the different civilisations on this planet and reaffirming clichés and prejudices about the Western Crusaders of old. Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations (1996) was perhaps more prescient than the critics had initially given him credit for.

So where are we going from here? How can we progress beyond the level of technological adolescence? In his search for extraterrestrial civilisations, the American cosmologist Carl Sagan (1934-96) suggested that extraplanetary civilisations, if they existed at all in this expanding universe, only ever have a slim chance of surviving into mature technological adulthood. Whether our own terrestrial civilisation can reach that stage of an enlightened

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perspective from that mountain peak of human consciousness remains to be seen. Will we have enough wisdom to survive with our explosive technological knowledge? We may be able to fly to Mars and beyond but we cannot stop ourselves from targeting drones, cruise missiles or worse at perceived enemies here on Earth.

The resulting flow of human misery shows no signs of abating. The United Nations Migration Report 2020 suggests that in 2019, a total of 272 million humans lived away from their country of birth, representing about 3.5% of the global population. From 1970 to date these figures have steadily increased from a ‘mere’ 84 million people residing in a foreign country. These figures refer to all migrants of which refugees are merely a much smaller part. Such flows,

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however, have consequences. Will a growing mix of very different mindsets in the new target countries primarily lead to ‘melting pot’ integration and new enriching synergies or do we also have to consider the possibilities of clashes between segregated communities, because citizens of Western nation states have very different ideas about human rights than e.g. tribal Iraqi Kurds or indeed Afghan Hazara?

Why do some of the native school teachers in France, England and Germany have to go into hiding with their families, for fear of becoming a statistic? What have we done? This is not what we intended. All we wanted was a better life for everyone.

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Our chosen pathway of technological progress has enabled us to live better and longer than ever before. Without scientific advance we might never have been born into this amazing world at all, because our ancestors may never have survived into reproductive adulthood. Do we perhaps live in a tragic Faustian civilisation, harbouring a subconscious premonition that all this can only end in tears because the spirit that has been summoned and that has delivered all these ‘gifts’ is not genuinely benevolent at heart? It gives and takes at the same time. Whatever it provides in terms of seemingly unlimited knowledge and endless pleasure, in goods and services, it takes away from us in terms of human connectedness that gives us meaning and joy.

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When traditional faith is abandoned for enlightened reason alone, human nature soon fills the religious void and craves new beliefs, be they esoteric, environmental, political or social. New ‘truths’ will become worthy of our attention and commitment, often providing us with new tribal homes. Does the spirit of the Enlightenment, priding itself in openness, individuality and religious freedom still have a vibrant future? How do we deal with those new arrivals who do not strive for personal freedom but for personal honour and truth, divine or otherwise? How do the tolerant deal with the intolerant? How do the enlightened freedom seekers deal with communities of ancient meaning and strong ties of kinship who can mobilise multitudes in minutes? The ones whose cultural strength lies in wholeheartedly acknowledging the principle

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of human ignorance and thus the need for scientific research will have to find a way of discourse with those who live by time-honoured certainties. What do we do, though, when the ‘corridor of political correctness’ is getting so narrow that even universities stop platforming inconvenient and ‘incorrect’ perspectives?

If Martin Luther lived today, trying to present his revolutionary views about ‘the state of the corrupt ecclesiastical order’ at a modern university, would he be denied access because his views would be deemed unacceptable and politically incorrect? And even if he had been given permission to speak, would be shouted down by some interest group? Genuine debate and true intellectual discourse are far too often ‘cancelled’ by labelling

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the opposite number populist, racist or phobic. The accusation of ‘hate speech’ can marginalise and invalidate any unorthodox perspective. It can even end careers, land you in court and cancel your Facebook account if not your bank connection. To what extent did Orwell foresee all this?

Some observers are clearly worried. They see a declining, sclerotic Western civilisation, stumbling over its own inner contradictions. A tired and weary culture, still flaunting its abundance hedonistically but full of fatalism and feeling guilty about many aspects of their own historical development. Between 1914 and 1945 suicidal European nations went for each other’s throats, engaged in prolonged trench warfare and industrial extermination programmes. It was during the interwar period that Oswald Spengler

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published his famous book ‘The Decline of the West’. A deluge of publications on the same theme soon hit the market in all European languages. Do they have a point?

New international initiatives today speak a language of their own. There is talk of a Great Reset at the World Economic Forum in Davos. From the UN Global Compact for Migration, adopted in December 2018 in Marrakech right to the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum 2020, there is clear evidence that the decision makers of many supranational organisations wish to promote ever rising levels of globalisation, thus normalising the intercontinental flow of ‘human capital’ and reducing the sovereignty of member nation states.

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What will the new world order look like? Will it be kind to the individual of old or will the digital power of artificial intelligence turn the Orwellian perspective of 1984 into mere child play? Let us remain aware of the potential dangers of the winding pathways into subtle new forms of submission. Are we in danger of having to comply with a never-ending sequence of newly prescribed targets in compliance with EU or UN Compacts? We certainly have a lot to lose. Alternatively, we might still be able to create a peaceful, tolerant and sustainable world for our children and grandchildren, if we do avoid all these pitfalls. Or is it all much simpler? Once we have climbed to the top of our mountain, there remains only one way to go.

ESSAY

Wer seine Seele einzig durch die Linse seiner asozialen Medienblase erlebt, sieht letztlich nur sich selbst. Egal, wie sehr er oder sie betont, gegen das Unrecht dieser Welt zu kämpfen. Dieser seltsame Narzissmus des 21. Jh. gibt scheinheilig vor, sich der Authentizität zu verschreiben, und stößt dabei eben diese zurück in den See, worin er sein eigenes verlogenes Instagram-Lächeln gerade bewundert.

Cate Blanchett spielt in diesem Zusammenhang in ihrem Film „Tár“ (2022) eine der intelligentesten Figuren, die das Kino seit Jahren hervorgebracht hat. Lydia Tár ist nämlich eine Frau, die man weder nur lieben noch nur hassen kann. Sie erkennt als dominante Dirigentin diese weichgezeichnete Illusion der Selbstbeweihräucherung, wenn Kunst der Vergangenheit den Stempel „das Böse“ erhält,

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weil der Künstler sich nicht nach heutigen Normen verhalten hat. Vor Jahrhunderten. Musik wird deshalb hässlich. Egal, wie schön sie ist. Ein Bild wird deshalb zur unbeholfenen Zeichnung eines Volksschulkindes. Egal, was für ein Kunstwerk es ist. Wer die Schönheit vor allen anderen als hässlich erkennt, wird zum Retter oder zur Retterin der Welt.

Brandmarkung wird dabei zu identitätsstiftender Erlösung. Wer jemanden zu brandmarken vermag, scheint eine Trophäe einzuheimsen. Wenn eine Frau davon spricht, dass sie sich nicht von anderen verbieten lassen will, sich als „Frau“ zu bezeichnen, erfolgt mit einem Zischen der Stempel „transphob“. Damit geklärt ist, in welche Herde diese Kuh gehört. Wir erklären die Welt nur noch

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in schwarz und weiß. Wer nicht für mich ist, ist gegen mich. Und gehört deshalb verboten. Egal, was er oder sie tut. Wer er oder sie ist. Politisch aktuell genehme Pronomen merzen die Grautöne aus unserer Sprache. Gemeinsam mit den Doppelpunkten und den Sternchen oder beidem oder doch dem Unterstrich. Die Siege der zweiten Frauenbewegung sind nicht mehr so wichtig. Zeitschriften und Bücher über diese historischen Selbstermächtigungen der Frauen sind nicht länger en vogue.

„Die Leute sollen doch endlich mal etwas Gescheites lesen!“

Mit dieser Aufforderung beschimpfen die Generationen Y und Z immer wieder all jene als dumm, die den Boden der Freiheit bereitet haben, auf dem diese beiden Generationen selbst stolzieren. Der Pfau der Gegenwart hat schöne

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Federn. Die er immer wieder – je nach asozialer Lust und Laune – stolz der Welt präsentiert. Auf der großen Bühne. Auf seinen Plattformen. In seinen langweiligen Blubberblasen.

Die künstlerischen Fähigkeiten eines Johann Sebastian Bach sind bei diesem Blubbern ebenso das Feindbild wie auch dessen Hautfarbe und vor allem sein Geschlecht. Komponiert wird nur noch mit der Farbe unserer Haut. Musik wird nur noch per ohnehin zu kleinem Penis kreiert. Kunst, die von Ideologie vergewaltigt wird, wird dabei nicht zum Opfer, sondern zur Täterin. Fantasie wird durch den Kopfschuss reaktionärer Verbissenheit exekutiert. Kunst soll verunmöglicht werden. Denn Kunst ist künftig nur noch

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das, was andere uns vorschreiben. Ausgeführte militärische Befehle. Ingredienzien eines vorgegebenen Rezepts. Schönheit gibt es nur noch in Schablonen. Schablonen naiver Selbstbeweihräucherung. Ausgestochene Plätzchen in vorgegebener Größe. Ohne Geschmack. Der Teig ist die schlecht ausgewalkte Erwartungshaltung selbst ernannter Weltenretter.

Ich erinnere mich an ein Seminar zum Thema „Kunst und Macht“, das ich vor Jahren im Zuge meiner Dissertation über die politische Aktivistin Joan Baez besucht habe. Thema meines Seminarvortrages war der Antisemitismus Richard Wagners. Ich habe mir diverse politische Pamphlete Wagners aus den 1850er und 1860er Jahren vorgenommen und sie bezüglich ihrer Bedeutung für die Beziehung

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zwischen Politik und Kunst untersucht. Darunter seine berüchtigte Hassschrift „Zum Judenthum in Der Musik“ (veröffentlicht 1869). Seit dieser Lektüre bin auch ich, sobald ich Wagner höre, nicht länger davor gefeit, vor meinem inneren Auge Bilder der Shoa zu sehen. Was aber nichts mit seiner Musik zu tun hat. Sondern mit dem Anti-Semitismus des 19. Jh., den Wagner in seinen Texten so lüstern aufgreift. Weshalb es niemanden erstaunt, dass die unheilvollen Apologeten des 20. Jh. sich dieser Musik bedienten. Das wurde auch für mich zu einem gewissen Dilemma in meiner musikalischen Rezeption.

Ich habe allerdings für dieses Dilemma eine simple Lösung gefunden. Ich höre mir Musik von Wagner nicht mehr an. Denn niemand zwingt mich dazu. Niemand wird dazu

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gezwungen, Musik zu hören. Wir sind dazu in der Lage, uns frei zu entscheiden, welche Musik wir hören wollen. Vor allen Dingen fordere ich nicht von der Welt, dass Wagners Musik verboten gehört. Ich bin dazu in der Lage, anderen Menschen ebenfalls das Recht zuzugestehen, jene Musik zu hören, die sie hören wollen. Jemandem anderen verbieten zu wollen, Musik nicht länger hören bzw. aufführen zu dürfen, weil „sich das nicht gehört“, weil das „kulturell nicht korrekt ist“, hat für mich zu große Ähnlichkeit mit ideologischen Rülpsern der Nazis und ihrer Überzeugung, sie dürften darüber bestimmen, welche Musik „entartet“ sei.

Totalitäre Regime nehmen sich immer auch die Kultur vor, um ihre Herrschaft zu untermauern. Sowohl von rechts als auch von links. Maos Kulturrevolution hat ebenso

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sadistisch Bestimmungen aufgestellt, welche Kunst von nun an „genehm“ war. Die Geschichte ist ein aufgeschlagenes Buch, wenn wir wissen wollen, wohin es führt, wenn man Kunst verbietet.

Doch auch die Geschichte selbst soll nicht länger als Buch gelesen werden. Geschweige denn verstanden werden. Wenn, dann darf sie nur noch umgeschrieben präsentiert werden. Ja. So einfach ist es in der Tat. Wir steigen in unsere Zeitmaschine und schreiben die Geschichte und ihre Geschichten einfach um. Damit die Vergangenheit uns in der Gegenwart gefällt. Geschichte soll einmal mehr nur noch als Schablone der Gegenwart gelten. Ein billiges Ausstech-Figürchen für ein paar staubige Weihnachtsplätzchen. Die keiner will und dennoch jeder gefälligst zu fressen hat. Mit der weihnachtlichen Überzeugung, dass sowieso nur noch die Gegenwart gut sei.

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Die Inflation reibt zahllose Menschen in ihren Existenzen auf. Totalitäre Zersetzer der Demokratie feiern in immer mehr Ländern feuchtfröhlich ihre Siegeszüge. Flucht und Krieg lassen so viele Leichen wie eh und je hinter sich zurück. Die künstliche Intelligenz erregt immer mehr Menschen in ihrer sexuellen Unterdrückung bis hin zu völliger Ekstase. Weil sie ihre eigene Intelligenz dann endlich, endlich nicht mehr brauchen. Es scheint mir immer noch schleierhaft, warum die Gegenwart so von sich überzeugt ist. Vielleicht, weil erst in der Gegenwart die wahre Literatur entsteht.

„Die Leute sollen doch endlich mal etwas Gescheites lesen!“

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Immer öfter heißt dieser arrogante Befehl auch, dass nur noch gelesen werden soll, was aktuellen Standards gemäß umgeschrieben wurde. So dass niemand mehr in seinen Gefühlen verletzt wird. Ich wiederhole meine Skepsis über diese allzu stolz proklamierte Strategie einer sogenannten Empathie, mit der die Gegenwart sich selbst beweihräuchert. Denn ich stelle nicht fest, dass dadurch der Rassismus in der Gesellschaft schwindet. Ich sehe auch die Transphobie nicht weniger werden. Mühsam erkämpfte LGBT-Rechte sind ebenfalls quasi täglich in Gefahr, wieder zurückgefahren zu werden. Von der Tatsache, dass die Siege der zweiten Frauenbewegung nicht mehr von Bedeutung sein sollen, will ich gar nicht anfangen. Zumal Frauen von nun an ein Schuldgefühl verspüren sollen, wenn sie sich überhaupt als Frauen bezeichnen.

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Wieso halten wir an der Überzeugung fest, dass alle armen hilflosen Menschen als ewige Opfer, die sie sind, ohne uns für immer zu schwach bleiben werden, um sich mit einer Welt auseinanderzusetzen, die alles andere als jene Idylle ist, die wir uns selbst ständig und immer wieder auf ihr und über sie einreden? Jene Idylle, die sie nie war. Die sie auch nie sein wird. Das wissen wir. Dennoch sind wir der Überzeugung, dass etwa ein Kinderbuch, das in den 1940er Jahren geschrieben wurde, gefälligst damals hätte klingen sollen als wäre es in den 2020er Jahren geschrieben und in die Vergangenheit zurückgebeamt worden. Zumal ja ohnehin nur noch die Gegenwart die wahren, die guten, die demgemäß eben reinen Bücher schreibt. Weil die Gegenwart so perfekt ist. So fehlerlos. So heldenhaft. So gutaussehend. So jung und erfolgreich. Wie auch wir auf all unseren

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asozialen Medien-Accounts mit all unseren vielen Followern. Die uns applaudieren, was für mutige Aktivistinnen und Aktivisten wir doch sind. Damit man sich auch in 500 Jahren noch an uns erinnern darf. Was für ein toller und wichtiger Mensch wir damals waren. Als die Vergangenheit noch die perfekte Gegenwart war.

Nicht so wie bei William Shakespeare. Dessen Gegenwart ist unsere Vergangenheit und deshalb schlecht. Weil sie vergangen ist. Weil er ein Mann war. Weil er weiß war. Die Krokodilstränen wegen all der Traumatisierungen durch die Lektüre eines untalentierten Schriftstellers wie ihn werden häufiger. Seit mehr als einem halben Jahrtausend feiert die Welt der Literatur William Shakespeare. Irgendwann ist jede Party zu Ende. Shakespeare ist von nun an ein schlechter

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Autor. Denn seine Werke traumatisieren die lädierten Seelen armer junger und für immer hilfloser Menschen der Gegenwart. Jene jungen Menschen, die nicht verstehen können, dass die Welt von Shakespeare die Welt des ausgehenden 16. Jh. war.

Nicht die Welt neurotischer Hashtags hysterischer selbst-ernannter Weltenretter und Erregung ob der Tatsache, dass von nun an diese lästige Kruste der Überreste menschlicher Intelligenz endlich abbröckeln darf. Schließlich haben wir nun künstliche Intelligenz geschaffen. Angesichts dieser Entwicklung ist es nicht länger nötig, erkennen zu können, dass die Werke des Barden vor mehr als 500 Jahren geschrieben wurden. Für eine derartige Erkenntnis würde es menschliche Intelligenz benötigen. Diese menschliche

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Intelligenz ist unbrauchbar geworden. Demgemäß werden wir auch selbst unbrauchbar. Also braucht es auch keinen William Shakespeare mehr.

Die Reflexion über die Frage, welche Literatur es noch braucht und welche nicht, führt uns immer weiter fort von der Literatur. Es geht nicht länger um Literatur. Es geht darum, bestimmen zu können, welche Literatur wir erlauben wollen und welche nicht. Es geht also in letzter Instanz nur um uns selbst. Um unser eigenes Ego. Denn wenn wir proklamieren, dass es bestimmte Werke nicht mehr braucht, dann wollen wir vor allem eines. Unsere eigene Position der Macht untermauern. Seht her, wir haben bestimmt, welche Literatur noch erlaubt sein soll und welche nicht mehr. Die Debatte kulminiert zumeist in der Erkenntnis, dass „Hass“ keine Meinung sei und deshalb sei es auch keine Zensur, Bücher zu verbieten.

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Ich bin äußerst leicht davon zu überzeugen, dass wir strenge Gesetze und Regeln brauchen, um etwa sogenannten „Sachbüchern“ zur Huldigung von Kriegsverbrechern Einhalt zu gebieten. Selbstbeweihräucherungen politischer Extremisten zur Verbreitung ihrer Propaganda haben in Öffentlichen Bibliotheken nichts verloren. Sowohl von rechts als auch von links. Denn Bibliotheken dürfen sich ihren Leitbildern der Diversität verpflichtet fühlen. Diese Diversität hat gefälligst immun zu bleiben gegen Vereinnahmung durch politische Extremisten. Denen durchaus bewusst ist, wie leicht sie in die Köpfe der Menschen kriechen könnten, wenn sie diesen Zugang für ihre Hasspropaganda missbrauchen könnten.

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Sobald wir aber zur Überzeugung gelangen, dass es für den Einsatz gegen diesen Hass keinerlei Regeln oder Gesetze braucht, übernehmen wir eine gefährliche Strategie. Wir tun damit der Welt kund, dass Gesetze unwichtig sind. Wir proklamieren dadurch unsere Akzeptanz der Willkür. Sobald wir der Überzeugung sind, dass nur wir es sind, die darüber bestimmen, welche Literatur lesenswert ist und welche nicht, nähern wir uns mit schnellen Schritten einer Ideologisierung der Literatur.

In meiner Arbeit als Bibliothekar vermittle ich Literatur. Nicht meine Weltanschauung. Ich beurteile nicht, wenn ein Mensch vor mir steht und irgendeinen schlecht produzierten Fließbandmüll liest. Sei es nun in dumpfer Kriminalliteratur dümpelnd oder in wilden Liebesromanen

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watend oder bei der Lektüre des 158. Tagebuchs eines schlecht gezeichneten Strichmännchens namens Greg. Ob ich diese Bücher mag oder nicht, interessiert unsere Kundschaften nicht. Manche fragen mich, welche Bücher ich mag. Dann empfehle ich ihnen Bücher, die ich liebe. Aber nur, wenn sie mich das aus freien Stücken fragen.

„Die Leute sollen doch endlich mal etwas Gescheites lesen!“

Unter diesem arroganten Motto tut man die Überzeugung kund, dass man selbst viel gescheiter sei als alle anderen. Dass man es besser wisse. Weil man überhaupt alles besser weiß. Ich kann, will und werde diesem Motto nicht folgen. Ich fordere von Menschen nicht mehr zu lesen. Weder um meine berufliche Existenz vor wem auch immer zu rechtfertigen. Auch nicht um mich besser zu fühlen, dass nur durch mich Menschen zur Literatur gefunden haben oder ich es bin, der die Welt rettet.

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Ich habe von Menschen überhaupt nicht das Geringste zu fordern. Das fordert der Respekt. Der Respekt, den mir Menschen zeigen, ist jener Respekt, den ich ihnen entgegen bringe. Mir fiele es in meinem beruflichen Alltag nicht ein, andere implizit oder explizit, vor ihnen oder hinter ihren Rücken, als dumm zu bezeichnen, weil sie nicht die Bücher lesen, die ich gern lese.

Diese Überzeugung ist und bleibt also immer ein Ausdruck einer Abgehobenheit, die mit der Literatur nur in den wenigsten Fälle überhaupt zu tun hat. Wir wollen der Welt so laut wie möglich kundtun, dass Menschen, die nicht jene Bücher lesen, die wir für lesenswert erachten, weniger gescheit als wir selbst sind. Dass wir es sind, die klug sind. Ganz im Gegenteil zu ihnen. Die eben nichts „Gescheites“

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lesen. Diese Abgehobenheit zeigt sich auch in immer regelmäßigeren Abständen in diversen Debatten über Lehrpläne an Universitäten. Vornehmlich zunächst an amerikanischen Universitäten. Und da üblicherweise jeder noch so lächerliche Trend aus dem Land mit dem gestürmten Kapitol mit zumeist wenigen Jahren Verspätung auch bei uns aufzuschlagen droht, lassen sich diese gackernden Debatten immer auch als Vorboten lesen.

Studentinnen und Studenten des Rechts an amerikanischen Universitäten verdeutlichen da beispielsweise ihre Diskursfähigkeiten, indem sie wie kleine Kinder schreien. Künftige Vertreterinnen und Vertreter des Rechts brüllen Gastdozenten nieder, deren Meinung sie nicht teilen. Mit einer Inbrunst, als ob sie sich in den Bierkellern Münchens

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vor hundert Jahren befänden. Zumeist bei Vorträgen, die sie überhaupt nicht besuchen müssten. Aber unbedingt besuchen wollen. Um der Welt kreischend kundzutun, dass alles Unrecht wegen ihnen – nur wegen ihnen – nun verschwinden wird. Indem sie Strategien faschistoider Parteien aus den Jahren auf dem unheilvollen Weg in den Zweiten Weltkrieg übernehmen. Mit der tiefen Überzeugung, dadurch Menschen davon abzuhalten, sich politischen Kräften anzuschließen, die nichts anderes im Sinn haben als die Zerstörung der Demokratie.

Es wirkt wie ein psychopathischer Tanz durch ein Spiegelkabinett, bei dem wir laut lallend vorgeben, singen zu können. In einem altmodischen Zirkus. Im Stil des 19. Jh. Wir wollen uns in möglichst vielen Spiegeln betrachten,

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uns selbst bewundern. Und merken nicht, dass wir uns gar nicht im Spiegelkabinett befinden. Wir sind Teil der Absurditäten-Schau. Sobald Widerstand gegen Unrecht zu einer Freakshow verkommt, stehen die Proponenten des Unrechts im Publikum und amüsieren sich königlich. Sie lachen uns aus. Weil wir abgelenkt sind. Was dazu führt, dass für sie die Bahn zur Macht frei ist. Denn wir sind damit beschäftigt zu schreien.

Wir schreien etwa auch immer lauter, dass der böse Literaturkanon endlich ausgemistet gehört. Weil da nur böse alte weiße Männer drin sind. Es gibt also doch viel zu viele Bücher, die endlich weggehören. Wir sind uns noch nicht einig, in welcher Form sie weggehören. Aber sie gehören weg. Sie gehören aus den Lehrplänen der Universitäten

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entfernt. Sie gehören aus Bibliotheken entfernt. Damit man endlich der einen und einzigen wahren Literatur zu ihrem Recht verhilft. Was ihr ohne uns verwehrt bleibt.

Wir schreien etwa PoC Autorinnen und Autoren wieder und wieder ins Gesicht, dass niemand sie hört. Dass sie arm und hilflos sind. Dass sie nur durch den heldenhaften Einsatz einer jungen zumeist weißen Generation vielleicht irgendwann einmal gehört werden könnten. Einer Generation, deren Vertreterinnen und Vertreter all die menschliche Schuld der letzten 1000 Jahre auf ihre schmalen Schultern geworfen haben, um einmal mehr laut keuchend betonen zu können, dass nur durch sie der Rassismus überwunden wird. Ohne zu merken, wie rassistisch sie selbst dabei vorgehen.

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Wer zum Beispiel einen kurzen Blick in die Geschichte der Afroamerikanischen Literatur wirft, hört laut und deutlich die schönsten und literarisch wertvollsten Stimmen, die die Weltliteratur herzugeben hat. Die manische Betonung, wie arm und hilflos und unterdrückt Vertreterinnen und Vertreter der PoC Literatur doch seien, macht mich wütend, wenn wir etwa an den ersten publizierten Lyrikband einer PoC Frau denken. Die mit den religiösen Überzeugungen ihrer Zeit verflochtenen lyrischen Reflexionen von Phillis Wheatly, die zum ersten Mal 1773 publiziert wurden, waren vielleicht nicht die überzeugendsten Ausdrücke von Poesie, durch ihren Status als Sklavin verdeutlichen sie aber eine Widerstandskraft, denen zurecht weltliterarische Bedeutung zuerkannt wird. Der damalige Präsident der Vereinigten

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Staaten hat sich handschriftlich bei ihr für ein Gedicht bedankt, das sie ihm zu Ehren geschrieben hat. In Europa war es vor allem Voltaire, der von ihrer veröffentlichten Lyrik begeistert war.

In den 250 Jahren seit Phillis Wheatly ist die Geschichte der Amerikanischen Literatur voll von Beweisen für die Sprachgewalt und Kunstfertigkeit von PoC Autorinnen und Autoren, die nicht einfach so verschwinden, nur weil man dafür sorgen will, dass sie nicht gehört werden. Damit man dann lautstark beweinen kann, dass sie nicht gehört werden. Die ersten Romane entstanden Mitte des 19. Jh. Gegen Ende des 19. Jh. und zu Beginn des 20. Jh. hat der Soziologe W.B.E. Dubois in „Die Seele der Schwarzen“ (1903) eine Grundlage der späteren Bürgerrechtsbewegung erschrieben.

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Als James Baldwin 1956 zum ersten Mal „Giovannis Zimmer“ veröffentlichte, kam ein Buch zur Welt, dass noch Jahrzehnte später dazu beigetragen hat, dass ich selbst in den 1990er Jahren bis ins Mark davon inspiriert wurde. Wenn ein schwarzer und schwuler Autor in einer Zeit völliger Unterdrückung und Ausgrenzung, wie es die 1950er Jahre waren, wagt, ein brillantes Buch wie „Giovannis Zimmer“ zu schreiben und zu publizieren, dann kann ich es fast ein halbes Jahrhundert später wagen, mich in einem überaus homophoben Umfeld als selbstbewusster junger schwuler Mann zu outen.

Zu dieser Zeit habe ich auch in mehreren Seminaren an der Universität Bücher der wunderbaren Toni Morrison verhandelt. Die alles andere als ein böser weißer alter

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Mann war. Ihr Roman „Menschenkind“, für den sie den Pulitzer Preis erhielt, gehört für mich immer noch zu den besten Romanen über das kollektive Trauma durch das Verbrechen der Sklaverei. Selten war ein Nobelpreis so verdient wie jener für Toni Morrison.

Ja, diese Stimmen wurden gezwungen, ihren Platz in der Weltliteratur über die Brücke eines Verbrechens der Weltgeschichte zu erobern. Ja, der Buchdruck und die Möglichkeit, Literatur für die Masse zu produzieren, nahm in Europa knapp 300 Jahre vor Phillis Wheatley ihren Anfang. Dennoch bedeutet die Behauptung, dass Stimmen der PoC Literatur im Kontext der Weltliteratur eine nicht gehörte Stimme seien, einen Ausdruck frappierender Heuchelei. Denn man gibt vor, gegen Rassismus zu sein,

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indem man sich rassistischer Unterdrückung als literarisches Argument als Propaganda zur Betonung des eigenen vermeintlichen Anti-Rassismus bedient.

Wenn wir deshalb den Literaturkanon von der „Entartung“ weißer Dominanz zu bereinigen gedenken, um diesen wieder und wieder manisch in die Welt gebrüllten Opferstatus von PoC Autorinnen und Autoren zu bekämpfen, dann artikulieren wir zwei Seiten einer Medaille. Auf der einen Seite zementieren wir ihren vermeintlichen Opferstatus und scheinen, diesen feiern zu wollen. Als ob wir erwarten – oder gar erhoffen? –, dass PoC Menschen zwanghaft für immer Opfer bleiben werden. Ohne unsere Hilfe.

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Auf der anderen Seite implizieren wir, dass es nicht in erster Linie darum geht, was in den Büchern steht. Die geschaffene Literatur rückt in den Hintergrund. Die Hautfarbe der Autorin bzw. des Autors tanzt in den Vordergrund. Was sich einmal mehr als neurotische Fixierung diagnostizieren ließe. Angesichts der literarischen Tiefe und Qualität der Werke von PoC Autorinnen und Autoren halte ich diesen Ansatz einmal mehr für rassistisch motivierte Überheblichkeit.

Motivation hinter dieser Überheblichkeit ist eine vermeintliche Reinheit der Literatur. Die Utopie der konfliktfreien Welt soll sich nach Vorgaben in der Literatur manifestieren. Kunst, die durch Reglementierung entsteht. Womit sie sich selbst ad absurdum führt. Die Strategie dahinter ist eine simple. Wir entscheiden, dass gewisse

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Bücher nicht mehr präsentiert, ausgestellt, verkauft oder unterrichtet werden. Denn wir sind die letzte verbliebene moralische Instanz, die der Kunst vorschreibt, wie sie zu sein hat. Diskussionen über die Frage, warum uns ein Buch gefällt oder nicht, werden hierbei immer mehr zu einem Mäntelchen der Verdrängung. Dieses Mäntelchen soll verdecken, dass uns der Inhalt des Buches nicht länger interessiert. Denn es muss nur noch die von außen aufoktroyierte Vorgabe erfüllt sein.

Wir wissen, dass bestimmte Themen publiziert werden. Die Frage wie diese Themen künstlerisch aufbereitet sind, rückt weiter und weiter in den Hintergrund. Sobald der Inhalt die Form relativiert, weiß die Form, dass ihre Zeit gekommen ist. Sobald angehende Autorinnen und Autoren wissen,

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welche Themen sich gut verkaufen, wissen sie, dass sie diesen Erwartungen gemäß produzieren müssen. Ob dieses Produkt künstlerisch wertvoll ist, ist von immer geringerem Interesse. Solange die aktuellen moralischen Positionen vertreten werden. Die einem dabei helfen, als engagierter Mensch zu gelten. Was einem die Aufmerksamkeit bringt, die man ansonsten nicht bekommt.

Auch der Film wird immer mehr zu schlichter Propaganda. Richard Dreyfuss ließ kürzlich aufhorchen, indem er kundtat, dass ihn die Inklusionsregeln für die Verleihung der Oscars zum Erbrechen brächten. Man mag die Drastik dieser Worte kritisieren und darf zur Genüge festhalten, dass es ausreichend talentierte schwarze Schauspieler gibt, die den Othello spielen können. Nichtsdestotrotz scheint

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ein Körnchen Wahrheit im Erbrochenen von Richard Dreyfuss zu finden zu sein. Wer Kunst reglementiert, mag zwar von hehren Idealen motiviert sein, führt dabei aber immer auch die Freiheit der Kunst vor. Lacht die Freiheit der Kunst aus. Degradiert diese Freiheit zu einem Manipulationsinstrument für schlichte Gemüter.

Mit dieser Motivation der Manipulation liefert man außerdem Munition für all jene, die man vorgibt, bekämpfen zu wollen. Das Wissen über diesen Waffenhandel macht die hehre Motivation der Weltenrettung noch eine kleine Spur heuchlerischer. Wenn in Florida LGBT-Literatur aus den Schulbibliotheken gezerrt wird, um die Zeit zurückzudrehen, dann sollte man die Strategie dahinter etwas genauer unter die Lupe nehmen.

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Einfach nur zu schreien: „Das sind alles Schwulenhasser!“ wird nicht reichen. Wird DeSantis nicht an seinem Kreuzzug gegen die LGBT-Community hindern. Wird all die rechten Recken weltweit nicht aufhalten, die immer öfter auf immer höhere Machtpositionen geschwemmt werden. Wer von der Motivation getrieben ist, den Literaturkanon von „bösen alten weißen Männern“ zu reinigen, mag sich zwar als großer Retter der augenscheinlich für immer hilflosen PoC Autorinnen und Autoren gerieren, hält aber letztlich einen Besen in der Hand, mit der auch die christlichen Fundamentalisten in Florida ihre Kinder vor all den bösen Regenbögen zu retten gedenken. Beide Seiten wollen die in ihren Augen schmutzige und böse Buchproduktion putzen. Den Boden solange schruppen, bis man sich huldvoll herablässt, darüber zu schreiten.

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Was bei dieser Putzattacke auffällt, ist die Manie dahinter. Die letztlich mit Literatur nichts zu tun hat. Hier wird einer Reinlichkeitsneurose schreibend Ausdruck verliehen. Worte verlieren an Bedeutung. Denn die Hautfarbe des Autors, die sexuelle Orientierung der Autorin oder die stolz proklamierte Nicht-Binarität des schreibenden Menschen sind von größerer Bedeutung. Als die Literatur. Mit dieser Priorisierung bereitet man die stinkende Lauge vor, mit der unser schmutziger Boden der Literatur gereinigt werden muss. Sprache schafft Bewusstsein. Dieser Tatsache ist in der Tat nicht zu widersprechen. Wenn aber die literarische Qualität dieser Sprache nicht länger die wichtigste Motivation beim Schaffen von Literatur ist, dann wird auch das Bewusstsein für Literatur schwinden. Weshalb die

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sprichwörtliche Katze, die sich in den Schwanz zu beißen versucht, müde wird. Sie erkennt, dass ein umjubelter Auftritt in Andrew Lloyd Webbers Musical-Klassiker eine weit bessere Verwendung und Verschwendung ihrer Zeit ist.

Der jüdische Philosoph Alain Finkielkraut hat in seiner überaus lesenswerten Reflexion über das Ende der Literatur dieser traurigen schwarzen Katze, die vor unseren Augen von links die Straße überquert, mit einer Erkenntnis ein Denkmal gesetzt, das die Unglaubwürdigkeit der heldenhaften Bestrebungen eloquent zur Geltung bringt. Ich nehme hier als überzeugter Atheist Bezug auf christlichen Aberglauben. Denn letztlich ist die Ideologisierung der Literatur und jeder anderen Form der Kunst immer auch ein Religionsersatz. Die Aufmerksamkeit, die uns als Kinder

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vorenthalten wurde, muss ausgeglichen werden. Sei es durch die Anzahl unserer Follower in unseren Asozialen Medienblasen. Egal, wie entmenschlicht diese Form der Kommunikation ist. Sei es durch unseren Einsatz für eine gerechtere Welt. Egal, wie ungerecht wir uns dabei verhalten.

Dieser kollektive kindliche Schrei nach Liebe wird im 21. Jh. zu einer digitalisierten Kakophonie, die der Welt den Mangel an Gerechtigkeit nicht ausgleichen wird. Die Harmonie der Kunst wird dabei immer öfter übertönt. Mit der Überzeugung, Recht zu haben. Was dennoch niemanden interessiert. Egal, wie sensibel wir uns bei all unseren Rettungen der Welt präsentieren. Die Menschheit wird mit einer derartigen Dreifaltigkeit der Diversität nicht

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gerettet werden. Alain Finkielkraut stellt die Glaubwürdigkeit im Kampf gegen Diskriminierung zurecht in Frage:

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Ist es möglich, durch diese zwangsneurotische Fixierung auf diese lautstark proklamierte Offenheit eine offenere Gesellschaft zu erreichen oder nicht? Die deprimierende Antwort auf diese Frage lässt sich an den dominoartigen Erfolgen jener politischen Kräfte ablesen, die sich einen Dreck um diese Offenheit kümmern. Die dieser Offenheit immer öfter und immer radikaler den Kampf ansagen. Dabei sind Frauenrechte in ebenso großer Gefahr wie mühsam erkämpfte LGBT-Rechte. Vielleicht hat der identitätspolitische Motor der Intersektionalität ja doch nicht mehr drauf als einfach nur laut aufzudröhnen, wenn es um das Ziel einer offenen Gesellschaft geht. Vielleicht ist das Festhalten an einer Strategie, die nicht zum gewünschten Ziel führt, ja auch Ausdruck eines Mangels an Intelligenz. Wobei diese schon länger an Bedeutung verliert. Weshalb die Welt feiert, dass wir nun eine Intelligenz geschaffen haben, die vor allen Dingen eines ist. Künstlich. Denn im 21. Jh. hat die Echtheit ausgedient.

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