Kiam Giorgio Silfer trovis mian afiŝon . . .
Giorgio Silfer pri literaturkritiko & Esperanta kulturo
. . . li fekegis en sian pantalonon. Jen la rezulto:
Esperanta Civito | HeKo 510 7-B, 29 jun 12: Komentarie al Ralph Dumain
Min ja flatas la subita neatendita lanĉo en famon. Silfer estis tiom ekscitita tiel honori min, li perdis ĉian koherecon. Mi posedas kelkajn sociologiajn studojn de Esperanto, sed nenia scienca esploro povas subteni arbitrajn propagandismajn ideologiajn metafizikaĵojn. Mi scias sufiĉe pri Raŭmismo, ke ĝi tute absurdiĝis tra la jaroj. Se oni atentas la Manifeston pli zorge ol mi unuarigarde faris antaŭ 25 jaroj, oni trovos la konceptan ĝermon de ĝia degenero. Kaj finvenkismo kaj raŭmismo dividas komunan emon fiksi kaj fortigi la Esperanto-kultecon kaj, kiel Silfer mem nomis ĝin, la getton. Sed gettoj ne estas sanaj lokoj.
Subkulturo Esperantujo ja estas, sed uniforma, kolektiveca ĝi ne estas. La komuna kvazaŭoficiala ideologio, ritaro, kaj ceteraj trajtoj kunligas esperantistojn minimume kiel aliaj mekanismoj kaj esprimoj de kunvivado: saluton, bonvolu, pardonu, dankon, nedankinde, adiaŭ, ktp. Historie, Esperanto ne estas tiom triviala, sed oni ne akceptu la ideologian karakterizon de kolektivo laŭ memflata imago, sen funda ekzameno.
Nu, Silfer referencas alian dokumenton el sia fikcia mondeto:
Esperanta Civito | Universala Deklaracio pri la Lingvaj Rajtoj
Frapas ĉi tie la tute eksmoda kaj pridubinda antaŭsupozo de la efektivigeblo kaj dezirindeco de apartaj memdeterminaj sociaj komunumoj en la moderna mondo. Temas ne nur pri rajtoj sed pri fortigo kvazaŭŝovinisma de organikismaj komunumoj. Sed kio dubindas eĉ pri realaj historie estiĝintaj etnoj kaj nacioj, tio absurdiĝas kiam oni analoge pretendus konceptigi Esperantujon tiel.
Notu bone ĉi tiun aserton:
"Ĉiuj lingvoj estas la esprimo de kolektiva identeco kaj de specifa maniero percepti kaj priskribi la realon; tial ili devas havi la eblecon profiti la kondiĉojn necesajn por plena disvolviĝo en ĉiuj funkcioj."Ĉi tiu frazo kaj dokumento esprimas ekstreman etnismon, eĉ etnocentrismon, kiu mirinde aplikiĝas ankaŭ al Esperantujo. Ĉi tiu ero de mistifika penso speciale reliefigas la narcisismon de la verkinto: "esprimo de kolektiva identeco kaj de specifa maniero percepti kaj priskribi la realon". Tio jam estas troiga aserto pri modernaj socioj en naciaj kadroj. Aplikata al Esperanto, la aserto estas des pli absurda.
"The State as a Social Relationship: Gustav Landauer Revived" by Dov Neumann, Jewdas (blog), 25 June 2010
This interview with Gabriel Kuhn, a scholar of anarchism and Gustav Landauer, amplifies on Landauer's irrationalism I alleged in my previous post. And Landauer's primitivist, organicist, mystical tendency is exemplified in his attitude toward Esperanto:
DN: Difference is a key word for Landauer. For example he vehemently opposes Esperanto for trying to unite humanity with one language. He makes an almost Tower of Babelesque critique.
GK: That’s a good example of Landauer’s opposition to rationalist measures of bringing people together. I guess Esperanto was to him a cold, mechanical idea of providing some kind of common structure of finding one another. Rather, people best do so through cherishing their own cultural traditions, expressions and language.
The idea of a homogenous socialist utopia was not something that appealed to him. If you’re not able to embrace all cultural forms that human kind has produced: you cannot embrace all of human kind, you cannot establish socialism. His idea of difference goes beyond a mere concept of tolerance. Socialism has to ‘grow’, that’s a word that appears often in his writings, it has to grow from the diversity of human beings and cultures that make up humanity.
The relevant documents by L. L. Zamenhof on Yiddish, Zionism, and the Jewish question are written in Yiddish, Russian, or Esperanto, and while there are Esperanto translations of most or all of the other writings, with the exception of a few letters, excerpts, or quotations everything in English is to be found in the scanty secondary literature in English. To get a picture of what Zamenhof was trying to accomplish, start here:
L.L. Zamenhof and the Shadow People: The Amazing Story of How Esperanto Came to Be by Esther Schor (2009)
Zamenhof and the Shadow People: video of presentation by Esther Schor, Zamenhof Symposium (15 December 2009)
There are revelant documents in Esperanto, Esperanto translation, and Yiddish on my web site:
Zamenhof & Zamenhofologio: Retgvidilo / Web Guide
For Zamenhof's conception of nationality in general, see:
“International Language” (Universal Races Congress, 1911) by L. L. Zamenhof
Now let's pick up where we left off in the previous post, and proceed to this article:
On the Idea of a Jewish Nation: Before and After Statism by David N. Myers, Perush, Volume 1, 2009
Myers find today's discourse about Jewish nationhood impoverished compared to the vigorous debates of a century ago:
I am intrigued by the once-vibrant ideological and theoretical debate of the early twentieth century that revolved around the idea of a Jewish nation. [. . . .] But our main task in the body of the paper will be to begin excavating a history of Jewish nationalism that has been somewhat forgotten, neglected, and at times, marginalized. I argue that there is in fact a common thread linking the theoretical poverty today and the partial narrative of Jewish nationalism that has been received: namely, the rise to dominance of one variant of Jewish nationalist ideology, what I call Statist Zionism.One must of course determine at the outset what one means by nation. Myers begins with Renan, who centers the idea of nationhood around a spiritual principle. This notion was taken up by Simon Dubnow. Comparable contemporary constructivist notions of nationalism have been articulated by Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm, and Benedict Anderson. Here is how Myers summarizes the development of Jewish self-conceptions:
European Jews in the mid-nineteenth century, embedded in societies affirming their own sense of national integrity, labored to find the best way to name themselves. They described themselves as a confession of faith, a religious community, a community of fate (Schicksalsgemeinschaft), a tribe (Stamm). Later, toward the end of the century, they began to designate themselves more assertively as a nation. Throughout the early twentieth century, this language of Jewish nationhood was widespread among Jewish intellectuals, writers, and scholars, especially in Europe, though one of the characteristic features of this discursive moment was the considerable divergence over the ways in which the term was understood. Over the course of the latter half of the twentieth century, this mode of Jewish political discourse—marked by the ubiquitous use of the language of “nation,” alongside an obsessive need to name the collective—began to dissipate. Since that time, and up to the present, there has been relatively little meditation about the nature of Jewish collectivity, especially when compared to the golden age of ideological contestation that extended from 1897 to 1939.Myers goes on to supply an explanation for the dissipation of this ideological contestation, and how it narrowed into the prevailing statism, which he now wishes to contest. But returning to the historical period that interests me:
So rather than begin in 1897 with the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland and then look forward to the inevitable creation (predicted by Theodor Herzl) of a Jewish state and again backward to the established “precursors of Zionism” (Alkalay, Kalischer, Hess, etc.) as they are known in Zionist historiography, I propose a somewhat less linear recounting that consists of the following chapters: first, a mid- to late-nineteenth-century phase in which Jews began to debate what to call themselves as a collective; second, a period that I’ll call the “golden age of Jewish nationalism,” commencing indeed in 1897, but highlighting less the historical inevitability of Statism and more the common commitment of Jewish nationalist movements to culture; and third, a phase in which rights of Jews as a national minority became a focus of international attention.Myers begins with the French revolution and the subsequent re-definition of Jewish identity with respect to Jewish emancipation and loyal citizenship in the countries in which Jews lived. In 1869, Adolf Jellinek introduced a notion we might call ethnicity but which he called Stamm, or tribe, more suited to the conditions of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Then there was the Jewish rebellion against the thrust of a new configuration of anti-Semitism in the 1870s-80s, when the term "anti-Semitism" itself was launched. Into the Berlin Antisemitismusstreit of 1879-1881 comes the 1879 lecture by the German-Jewish philosopher and psychologist Moritz Lazarus, “Was heißt National?” In 1897, Ahad Ha-am, whose focus was cultural renewal, represented a dissenting view from the vision of Theodor Herzl that won the day. The Austro-Marxist (not identified by Myers as such) Social Democrats Otto Bauer and Karl Renner endeavored to disaggregate the notions of nation and state. Note Renner's notion of national cultural autonomy. And note the connection to Bundism:
On this view, it was not the state or territory or even race (in its biological sense) that made a nation, but, in the first instance, culture. Of course, we cannot forget the powerful class dimension in the Bund’s agenda, which added a deterministic quality to its view of Jewish nationalism. But it is the nexus between nation and culture that linked the Bund, in its 1905 platform, to the Folkspartay founded by Simon Dubnow in St. Petersburg a year later. Although the two parties disagreed over the question of socialism, they both agitated for the right of Jews to preside over their own cultural affairs, in their own language, Yiddish. In fact, it was that latter point that prompted the convening of an assembly of intellectuals and writers in Czernowitz a few years later in 1908—one hundred years ago (and now being marked with several centennial conferences). Amidst a typically discordant group of Jews, the conference demanded equal rights for Yiddish, but could not agree on declaring Yiddish “the national language of the Jewish people.” Instead, it opted for the formulation “a national language,” in recognition of the potent claims that Hebrew too deserved recognition as such.One should compare this to Zamenhof's notion that a people is defined by language and religion.
. . . there was a consequential debate among a growing and influential group of European Jews regarding the essence, preferred form, and desired venue of the Jewish nation in the first two decades of the twentieth century. It was not only Zionists, Autonomists, and Bundists, but also Territorialists of Israel Zangwill’s ilk and even the Agude, the Orthodox Agudat Yisrael, which arose formally in 1912 as a pan-national traditionalist alternative to secular nationalism.This is the debate that was cast down the memory hole by victorious statism. But continuing on, World War I and the subsequent reterritorialization spurred a new round of debate. Not mentioned by Myers: Zamenhof circulated his proposal to the world's diplomats on the post-war political order in 1915 and died in 1917, so he wasn't a party to the debates of 1919 and the 1919 peace conference where national minority rights were on the table.
First, a list of references:
Clash Of Zionisms In Academia
(Group of scholars pressing idea of cultural Zionism, amid pushback)
[review of a recent conference & of Noam Pianko's Zionism and the Roads Not Taken: Rawidowicz, Kaplan, Kohn]
by Eric Herschthal
The Jewish Week (New York), June 23, 2010
On the Idea of a Jewish Nation: Before and After Statism by David N. Myers, Perush, Volume 1, 2009
David N. Myers, Dept. of History, UCLA
Michael Berkowitz, Review of Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People, Reviews in History, review no. 973, 21 December 2010
My Articles | Noam Pianko, Professor of Jewish History, University of WA
David N. Myers’ “Between Jew & Arab: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz” by Jeremiah Haber, The Magnes Zionist (blog), June 2, 2009
When I say the new Jewish historiography, I mean, before anything else, new to me. It is, however, quite contemporary, judging from Herschthal. These scholars whom I am just encountering are deeply dissatisfied with Israel in its current state and are retracing their historical steps to uncover a variegated intellectual history prior to the hammering of history into a party line in conformity with the statism that congealed in Zionism in the 1940s. This means the highlighting of the cultural Zionism that was defeated by statism.
These authors appear to be historically scrupulous, not merely reshaping historiography to serve contemporary political needs in a crude instrumentalist fashion. They also are rethinking the nature of Jewish peoplehood from deep within that cultural milieu. Outsiders would of course not feel this weight in the process of pursuing identical research in the history of ideas, and perhaps they would see the political impetus connected with these scholars' work as ill-conceived or futile. However, if there is any way out of the current situation, those Jewish scholars emotionally connected to Israel will have to struggle their way into the future in their own terms, as part of the total process.
The most striking example among the authors of the articles listed above is Haber, a self-described Orthodox Jew with a heavy investment in Israel, with which he is now disgusted. One anonymous commenter stated the problem starkly: "I think that cultural Zionists lost ground to political Zionists since they were dealing with illusions while political Zionists were dealing with reality." But if you look at the debates outlined by Herschthal, you could also conclude that the conceptual basis for reforming the Zionist project is futile. Specific issues regarding Israeli policies and the treatment of Palestinian Arabs may be obvious and discussable within the cultural framework, but there is a deeper, absent discussion on the fundamental relation between cultural (trans)formation and political economy that suggests that this historiographical debate is trapped within ideological superstructures that were responsible for the illusions that gripped idealistic Jewish intellectuals a century ago.
It may be that these scholars, in reaching for an old perspective as a way to cope with a contemporary political impasse, are engaging in an illusory project, but as long as the scholarship on the past is sound, it can be very useful. By contrast, Berkowitz's review of Shlomo Sand highlights the dangers of reckless instrumentalization of the past in order to dislodge the reigning ideology of the present. Berkowitz finds Sand a shoddy scholar and a vulgarizer of far more exacting predecessors.
My project is really about understanding the evolution of social theory and is not immediately connected to contemporary politics except insofar as current exigencies oversimplify the historical trajectory that got us here. I am interested in two things:
(1) How did Jewish intellectuals conceptualize peoplehood in the last third of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th?
(2) How did social theorists—Marxists and others—conceptualize the nature of Jewish peoplehood in this same time span?
The upshot is the question whether social theory, from within or without the Jewish intelligentsia, had advanced in this time span to the point where it could adequately encapsulate the anomalous group cohesion of central and Eastern European Jews.
Now I want to introduce two of my bibliographies:
L. L. Zamenhof & the Cultural, Religious, Professional & Political Context of 19th-20th Century Eastern European Jewish Intellectuals: Selected Bibliography
Marxism & the Jewish Question: Selected Bibliography
These reflect the interplay between the two questions I have posed, with the specific addition of the perspective of L. L. Zamenhof. Zamenhof is best known as the creator of Esperanto; however, he passed through a number of other projects: Zionism, reform of Yiddish, reform of Judaism (Hillelism), and eventually a religious project (Homaranismo) transcending Judaism per se. All along the line Zamenhof put forth bold conceptions of what did or would (re-)make of Jews a people.
Rimarku, ke mia raporto pri la prelego de Humphrey Tonkin pri "Esperanto en la Nuna Mondo" estas sufiĉe diplomateca. Fakte, mi estas multe pli cinika. Komente ĉe la prelego, mi menciis iom el mia skeptikemo, ekz. citante mian sperton de usonaj esperantistoj en la antaŭa usona kongreso en Vaŝingtono en 1987, kiam pluraj usonaj esperantistoj esprimis la saman dekstran tendencon pri hispanlingvanoj en Usono kiel aliaj usonanoj. Mi asertis, ke estas absurdaĵo supozi ke usonaj esperantistoj havas ajnan intereson pri "lingva diskriminacio."
Post miaj komentoj, D-ro Tonkin asertis ke temas pri etika demando de diverseco, identeco, diskriminacio, ktp.
Ĉi tiuj abstraktaj asertoj tute ne konvinkas min. Mi ne perceptas praktikan rilaton inter la abstraktaj supozataj koncernoj de esperantistoj kaj realaj lingvaj, etnaj, naciaj, landaj, kaj internaciaj problemoj. Cetere, mi skeptikas pri la koncepto postmoderisma, kvankam mi komprenas la enhavon sub tiu misetikedo. Mi ankaŭ cinikas pri konceptoj "diverseco" kaj "identeco" favorata de la etburĝa liberalularo.
Cetere, oni ne sufiĉe esploris la situacion de reteca socia agado en sociaj movadoj. Percepteblas, ege evidentas, la kapablo por sinorganizado de movadanoj (la eksplodo de movado de negraj ateistoj/humanistoj en Usono el nenio, nur dum la pasinta jaro, estas elstara ekzemplo!), sed restas la demando de la efikeco de sociaj movadoj al la ĝenerala socio. Oni ja povas brile sin organizi kaj resti socipolitike impotenta.
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