Mi sono fatto un filmino un po' sulla traccia di "wargames", quel film
che a suo tempo mi era piaciuto (forse meno che a tant* qui, perché,
figlio di comunisti a loro modo "belli tosti", non ho avuto computer
fino a, boh, tipo 18 anni, quando mio padre si rassegnò a prenderlo
per lavoro: il computer per i miei era male così come i cartoni
giapponesi, tutti, a prescindere, e quindi un po' anche per me).
In questo filmino che mi sono fatto, io ero un po' come il protagonista
di "wargames", anche se non c'avevo la morosa e il tizio da convincere
a schiodarsi dalla sua depressione per "salvare il mondo" non era un
luminare di informatica (o di materie scientifiche, mi pare, cmq), ma
un "luminare" - anche senza virgolette - di materie umanistiche, che si
chiama René Girard, antropologo e, mi pare, filosofo, e sicuramente
molto esperto d'arte - "classica", diciamo così; e cattolico. Ha avuto
un po' di confronti con Vattimo (che a me non piace granché, per quel
poco che ne ho letto), e comunque con quel che ha scritto si sono
confrontati - più o meno direttamente, più o meno indirettamente -
molti antropologi più o meno "sinistri". Io non sono antropologo, né
luminare di scienza: ho un diploma ottenuto a una scuola di recupero un
paio d'anni fa. Però va be' ho letto molto, soprattutto molta
letteratura ma anche un po' di antropologia, abbastanza tanta
psicologia, un po' di storia delle religioni, ecc.; e le cose che
scrivo in questa lettera immaginaria, non le ho viste scritte o dette
nei - non molti, per la verità - "confronti" che ho seguito-letto.
Indi per cui, per farla breve, adess ghe pensi mì :))
Il "please" iniziale, comunque, non è affatto implorante.
E' una cosa che ho scritto un po' a me (al di là del filmino), come
tentativo di risposta alle cose che ho letto nei suoi libri; e, nel
filmino, un po' "a lui", ma anche semmai alla "intellettualità
sinistra", un tantino (eufemio) evanescente; un po' a voi, perché ci
sono discorsi che forse in qualche modo ci riguardano.
Please, monsieur René Girard, come out and play stronger on the "good"
side. You know that the apocalypse "Jesus told about" (with his
return from the skies and the final judgement and the separation of
evil from good and so on) was even *by itself* (did "him" told that
prophecy, or not) what pushed, in such a huge hypocricy, the genocides
in america, africa, asia (there's no "discrepancy" between what "he was
told to have told" and what the european powers did); and then, it was
mainly the richness wich came to europe from those genocides and
slaveries what re-opened a margin for ideas of democracy, equality, and
so on. But human sacrifice was no longer practiced in at least some, if
not many of those places europeans wasted. Those people didn't
"remember" what was the "foundative stone" of every society - the human
sacrifice - but they didn't practice any longer that practice; so,
keeping an eye opened on what the roman and maybe jewish power may very
well have done on the storytelling of one (or many) *human* histories
no-one really knows (the history of one or more Christs), ask yourself
what could have been the need to raise a relative knowledge about "the
secret things at the foundation of the world", if not that hypocrite
apocalypse, in wich the "reason" for a genocide was that some of those
societies still practiced the human sacrifice - hypocrite in many ways,
not only because at least in some of these "other places" sacrifice was
no longer that practice it was "at the beginning", and at least in some
of these places it was already a very symbolic practice, involving only
plants, or plants and animals; but even because human sacrifice never
stopped "here around": the "heretics", the "witches", for example, and
so on. Who were they? The heretics were mostly people who, no more no
less then the Christ they knew, "went with their head down" against the
hypocricies of Church power of their time (like an angry goat, may I
say); and who where the "witches"? Emarginated women, thus women who
had a much "imaginative" sexuality and, mostly during youth, a strong
desire for vengeance against the society, which mostly expressed itself
in very imaginative ways and did not harm anyone: perfect "scape
goats". This all sucks, monsieur Girard. A consequence of the
storytelling of that story, the story of Christ, was also a big step
forward onto the path of symbolical thinking, that's for sure (most
scientists who, "after Christ", did revolutionary discoveries where
christians, though often they had a somewhat controversial but always
very speculative relation with their religion), through an unprecented
symbolization: the symbolization of the foundative practice "as it
was" (with no "displacements"); and, at the same time, it's equally
sure its price was such a huge bloodshed. What was the need for such an
acceleration, and a return of so much blood, which came from that
"epiphany", if not a matter of accumulation of power, richness? And,
also, what did the "powerful ones" do, what are they doing of the
privilege, power, richness they gained through genocides and slaveries?
They mostly are killing the whole world.
Every Christ is a (sometimes particular) form of the "devil", at least
before dying. In the Old Testament, the devil is defined as "the one
who accuses god before [davanti a] the man"; and since god is a
projection of humans' will for power, a projection which had so much
influence in ancient times, the devil is one who accuses the "powerful
ones" - which mostly coincided with the priests, in ancient times -
before the people... sometimes putting into light their
"contraddictions" and imagining a slightly different kind of god (like
"Jesus", or the Jesus we know), sometimes walking other paths, like
Socrate. And the devil "looks like a goat" simply because it was a goat
they killed when they didn't need to kill some other Christ; or, later,
the goat they took and left in the desert, for a very, very probable,
and very possibly more painful death, when they didn't need to do
something very similar to humans (the greeks, in Athen, too): they took
the most emarginated, since no-one would have venged him-her, and took
him-her to the forests, for a very probable bad and painful death. So
"the devil", with it's goat-like look, is mostly a projecton of the
ritual assassins fearing a vendicative return of the "sacred one"; and
sometimes he-she, for true, "is the goat", or one who strongly risks to
become a "goat", an "emarginated" and "different" person that "comes
back" from some kind of desert for a vengeance which, in reality, many
times has been no more then telling the truth about the horrors the
concentration of power practices, and its hypocracy, often with an
"end" which very much resembles a "foundative sacrifice". He-she is a
"devil" as long as those "oh so good" people don't kill him-her
(sometimes, the more, the less, with his-her condescendence, like in
Socrate's case and, in more profound but also more contraddictory ways,
in "Jesus'" one); and then later the powerfuls probably tell a
different story from what it was. So, who is the good? Who is the bad?
Also, you're so wrong in many passages of your attempt of
"annihilation" of Freud's intuitions: it's not only a matter of
imitation, love for a mother in an infant is mainly a "biological"
matter, an infant loves the body, the fusional "lost paradise" and
"nirvana" he came from, for "biological" reasons, for very physical
reasons (its heat, its smell, its hormones, the fact that body gives
the infant nutrition, and so on -- this all resembles to the infant the
"originary condition"); he also likes other bodies, other warmths
(father's, grandma's, and so on), as long as they are present and they
"smell good" (they're not too much nervous or afraid and so on).
I agree he can't think of "killing his father" at that age, he can
- more or less consciously - desire this, or something similar, later.
But you say "the infant has no desire for the mother before he starts
imitating the father - desire borns only from imitation"; that's not
true: a very profound desire and pleasure (in lucky situations) was
there before, for hormonal, nutritional, biological reasons, and for
the fact the mother has the most physical relation with the infant,
which is a biological matter, founded on nutrition and hormones, and a
relation which was very physical even before birth. Imitation comes
later and "sexualizes" a fusional desire that was there before (the
child seeing kisses and sometimes other profound contacts of mother and
father, and then, sooner or later, understanding or seeing the father
has a more profound "return to the lost paradise", compared to the
contacts he has and can have with the mother); and with this
"sexualization", which is - but at that point, not before - also
"imitative", but it's an imitation which finds a "ready" body, borns
the "aedipus' matter", rivalry, jeaulosy, and so on, the more the less
"unconscious"; subconscious "exists", you deny it but it so clearly
exists; and, also, it's not so much individual; the "aedipus matter"
exists, or, at least, it's a very common path; it just borns and
expresses itself later - the more, the less - then what Freud thought;
and, yes, it comes a lot from imitation, but it's an imitation which is
founded on a desire that was there before. I agree this is the
fundamental "trauma", I agree it's a "trauma" for the child to discover
mother, father and a whole society often pushes him to imitate the
father (the more the less in every aspect), but without the
possibility to "lay with the mother" - without the possibility, let's
put it this way again, the more the less unconscious, to have "a moment
of return", more profound than the contact he can have, to that "lost
paradise" we all come from.
Anyway, we both know what drives history is mainly the "will for
power", which is also very much related to eros and sexuality, but can
and does often exceed them.
......
