Date: Wed Jul 26 13:09:34 1995
Subject: martyrdom, repudiation


Tony, 
 
--- Interesting. In my view, the martyr as such is a certain 
signal point or baroque high point, and certainly not the 
only one, in and of violence, revenge and the enforcement of 
illusions of justice. It bears many of the basic structures 
of violence (totalization, violence itself, 
hystericalization, generalization, de-substantialization, 
physicalism, sheerness of force, revenge, violent negation, 
etc.) The maintenance in nonviolence would reveal these 
structures. It may be a necessary product of violence, but 
violence is not necessary in certain important ways.
 
Is the martyr authentic? He or she can be: authentic, 
inauthentic, alienated or ruptured. But then, Hitler was in 
certain ways very authentic. Does "authentic" mean "good" 
for you here? The possibility of the questin of the good is 
suspended in Heidegger, I believe. So suspended, as I have 
suggested, this good is not de-activated, but operates as 
necessary things do when in suspension and systematic 
silence. Systematic silence is a bad ground. It is a ground 
of violence.
 
The lesson of the martyr as: personal answer to violence and 
requirement of examples? It depends, I suppose. The 
impression I get concerning martyrdom is that it operates as 
a kind of mechanization of violence into the system of 
"stars". The martyr-as-example constitutes above all the 
distinction between the one and the many, and is as much an 
evidence of the shortcomings of the many as well the 
authenticity and possible moral integrity of the martyr. The 
many often have "passed the buck" and dumped responsibility 
on the martyr. In this respect, the "exemplary" function 
serves not to underscore the necessity of personal response, 
but the possibiltiy of displacing responsibility into a 
certain theatrical field: a capitalization on the "martyr" 
by both the violent and the nonviolent. The "star" mentality 
and the whole "regime of the proper name" sets up a vastly 
disproportionate and also disempowering systm of individual 
and central actors, and ties in with several dominant 
structures: dictation (the one speaking to the many without 
dialogue, non-dialogical dictation, of which Heidegger's 
"hearkening" appears to be an example), centralization and 
hierarchicalization of power and violence, seizure of truth 
through the convenience of the focus on the one, over- and 
mis-constitution, the effective use of the pan-optical, and 
diffuse and generalized condition of the tecnnology of the 
threat. The height of religious discourses, with their 
martyrs, might represent the congealed, first phase of the 
discourse on violence which is naively nonviolent, 
psychologically immature,and non-transvalutional. The star 
mentality has rendered the Haitian population of 5 million 
impotent against a band of 10,000 thugs. It is rendered the 
discourses of "martyrs" like Gandhi and Martin Luther King 
all but incomprehensible by putting these people on a plane 
different from our own. This "putting on a different plane" 
is precisely what President Aristide of Haiti did (see his 
autobiography), and in so doing he foreclosed the only 
viable route for resistance in Haiti: nonviolence, and 
instead had to give in to hypocracy. Yet, poignantly, it was 
the nonviolence of Randal Robinson's fast which sparked the 
critical mass of concern about Haiti. And we are left with 
Haitian labor union leaders, as the one I met at a 
conference, asking how there can be *more* Aristides. There 
can be more precisely when the star phenomenon as such gives 
way to a more universal empowerment. That empowerment, in so 
far as it can be released by the academy, lies in the 
question of *how*, which is systematically foreclosed 
through the capitalization on performance. This at the same 
time prefigures the reduction of the moral real to choice, 
and essentially partipates in the naive and 
nontransvaluational morality constituting "martyrdom" as 
such. Nonviolence, in the Gandhian sense, which was highly 
effecitve, constitutes above all a radical rupture with the 
"star" mentality, and in stead the direct employment of 
"experimental" thinking. This is in certain ways a nearly 
perfect parallel to the anti-dogmatism and posture of the 
scientist of phenomenology, although Gandhi's progression 
took place on the hybrid order of ahimsa satyagraha.
 
The conditions of naive and non-transvaluational morality 
appears to me to have lead to the flight from "the 
positivities" into the independent and de-moralized 
ontologies we encounter here. It accounts for the 
characteristic scoffing "disregard" for the moral one can 
easily find in the philosopher. The emergence of 
thoughtaction disrupts in the process both the original 
moral field/condition of which the martyr is a signal 
occurance and the major division between thought and action 
by which the discourses of, in and on thought occur. The 
philopher as thinker does not go far enough and becomes 
alienated. This alienation permates many aspects of the 
humanities. 
 
In so far as martyrdom constitutes punishment, which is 
largely the case, at the same time it represents the falling 
of nonviolence into revenge as punishment, which 
systematically disrupts the inner integrity and ownmost 
functions of Dasein. It is surprising to me, and really only 
an "unverified" suspicion on my part, that many "academics" 
vascillate between a retreat from the moral and a repressed 
or silenced, and hence bad, and seemingly often seething 
version of the very same morality from which it has taken 
flight. In any event, as deploying guilt and punishment, the 
condition of nonviolence is lost in the process, for this 
reason: punishment constitues the illusion of remorse. 
Punishment may be the primary falling of *moral* Dasein. 
"Beware all those in whom the desire to punish is strong". 
(not exact quote) Nonviolence knows that remorse is the true 
conditin of justice. Punishment is the attempt to satisfy 
the need for justice through the artificial imposition of 
suffering, whereas remorse is the authentic suffering of the 
one who cares who as commited a violence. In so far as 
martyrs take their place in the dominance of the illusion of 
punishment, they are not *authentically moral* at all, 
though they may be existentially authentic, though really 
the whole discourse might break down here. Heideggerian 
guilt is in no way a phenomenologically adequte description 
of the maintenance of Dasein in nonviolence. There is 
empathy and genuine care for others. Guilt is the 
identification of the commision of violence. As "guilt" it 
is the determination by self and others. The experience of 
the "guilty!" as responsible includes no conception, in 
Heidegger, of co-suffering. Indeed, Heidegger negates co-
suffering. Yet this condition of co-suffering is that within 
which every healthy intimate relationship maintains itself. 
 
The current trend to bring back the death penalty is a good 
example of how we are losing this contact with authentic 
remorse. Gandhian justice, as was Gandhi's practice even as 
a lawer, is to bring about reconciliation and remorse, not 
to exact punishment. The Grameen bank of Bangladesh handles 
non-repayment of loans in a similar justice principle, 
rather than through the exacting of penalties, and has a 
very high payback rate (98 percent!). When there is a severe 
death penalty, we are, perhaps, not murdered. We look into 
the face of the other, but do not know whether the other is 
*not* murdering us out of fear of retribution or out of fear 
of co-suffering. There is a big difference. A project I'm 
trying to initiate, the Thoughtaction Collective reparative 
justice project, aims to critique the criminal justice 
system according to the history, within that system, of 
reparative justice. Reparative justice is closer to 
developing authentic remorse. Remorse has been identified as 
a strong component in the effectiveness of the Japanese 
justice system. Minimally dependable lowering of recidivism 
rates through reparative sentencing are stastically 
projectible. If so projected, we can project the dependable 
possibiltiy of saving X amounts of lives and lowering the 
crime rate by X amount. If you are interested in this 
project, you are invited to contact me about it.
 
Those who I have seen who maintain themselves predominantly 
in guilt as an orgainzing principle appear to me to be, 
morally, profoundly inauthentic. As founded on martyrdom, 
his writing might constitute a high-point of the technology 
of guilt and punishment.
 
The question of repudiation is interesting: if the Christian 
Church tortur(es)(ed), then it already fully repudiates 
itself, unless its cheif constitutive element is alliance 
and not nonviolence. Repudiators would come in two classes: 
those who are violent and those who are not. Repudiation in 
the name of nonviolence would be an affirmation of such a 
church in so far as it's grounding principle is nonviolence. 
I think that if it says its grounding principle is not 
nonviolence, it is anyways, because that is the nature of 
nonviolence as a fundamental "law", as Merton quotes Gandhi, 
"anti-law", or condition of being. The activation of this 
condition is what would happen in "the discourse on 
(non)violence".
 
There can be no question that the anti-Christianity of both 
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche constituted "repudiation", yet 
both discourses were inbued fully with highly "Christian" 
principles of love and nonviolence. So go figure...

---
There is no path to peace. Peace is the path.

Tom Blancato
tblancato-AT-envirolink.org
Eyes on Violence (nonviolence and human rights monitoring in Haiti)
Thoughtaction Collective (reparative justice project)




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