Cultural Amnesia: Necessary
Memories from History and the Arts
by Clive James
In a universe more
and more abstract, it is up to us to make sure
that the human
voice does not cease to be heard.
Witold Gombrowicz
If there has ever been a time
in my life that called for a wholesale re-appreciation of humanism as an
essential way of being in the world that time is now. Donald Trump is but the witless,
leering figurehead of a supranational groundswell
of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, and anti-intellectualism that is currently
laying siege to many of the greatest achievements of the human mind, an
embarrassment of riches, ranging from philosophy, politics, rhetoric, education,
science, medicine, psychology, and law to art, literature, music, and history to
agriculture, journalism, architecture, theater, and dance. Touted by religious and
political zealots, and exploited daily by corporate warlords in their ruthless
pursuit of wealth, this vengeful backlash is apparent nearly everywhere one
turns: in our politics and laws, in our schools and universities, in our healthcare
and hospitals, in our policing and our prisons, and in our homes and civic
spaces. It is a backlash that threatens to erode and redefine our hard-won thinking
about the natural world itself, and our relationship to it, by attacking
science at large, its very authority, now openly (if mostly cynically) impugned.
At least a part of the
problem lies in the fracturing and general denigration of the humanities in the
U.S. as a whole since WWII, by which in particular I mean the steady corporate-governmental
takeover of the sciences (and of the mathematics they employ) for their own often
mercenary, often violent, often starkly anti-democratic ends. These days largely divorced
from the studia Humanitatis, the time-honored
disciplines of science and mathematics are increasingly now but the tools, the
handmaidens, of wealth and power, faithful servants of that menacing military
industrial complex that sociologist C. Wright Mills warned us about, back in
1956, in his groundbreaking study, The
Power Elite. More critical to the fate of humanity than ever, these ancient
fields of inquiry must be wrested from the grip of this powerful and reckless elite,
and brought back into the fold, so as once again to serve the interests of
peace and justice, so as once again to serve the interests of the many instead
of the few.
“Humanism,” as defined by
the American Humanist Association, “is a rational philosophy informed by science,
inspired by art, and motivated by compassion. Affirming the dignity of each
human being, it supports the maximization of individual liberty and opportunity
consonant with social and planetary responsibility. It advocates the extension
of participatory democracy and the expression of the open society, standing for
human rights and social justice. Free of supernaturalism, it recognizes human
beings as a part of nature and holds that values—be they religious, ethical, social
or political—have their source in human experience and culture. Humanism thus
derives the goals of life from human need and interest rather than from
theological or ideological abstractions, and asserts that humanity must take
responsibility for its own destiny.”
Adolf Hitler believed that
the mind was inherently seditious, and therefore that the body alone should be
the focus of a sound education, as only the body could be loyal and true. Of
course he was right: it is the very seditiousness of the mind—its capacity to
question, to reason, to imagine alternatives—that makes us most truly, most
defiantly human.
To that end, I strongly
recommend Clive James’ richly provocative compendium of short essays, Cultural Amnesia, a light, a beacon, in
these deeply dark times. Praised as “a master of eloquent distemper”, Clive
James “illuminates, rescues or occasionally demolishes” the careers of many of
the greatest figures of the twentieth century—and all with an erudition and a
faith in the human spirit that will make you shake your head in awe.
Sweeping back and forth
through time in his treatment of such famous (sometimes infamous) figures as
Leon Trotsky, Albert Einstein, Josef Goebbels, Marcel Proust, Sigmund Freud, Louis
Armstrong, Jean Cocteau, Albert Camus, and Mao Zedong, James is equally
compelling in his portraits of such brilliant, if lesser known lights as Walter
Benjamin, Anna Akmatova, Nirad C. Chauduri, Robert Brassilach, Nadezhda
Mandelstam, Raymond Aron, Federico Fellini, Zinka Milanov, Isoroku Yamamoto, Witold
Gombrowicz, Eugenio Montale, Octavio Paz, Edward Said, Beatrix Potter, Charlie
Chaplin, and Coco Chanel.
Cultural Amnesia is a stirring, eclectic, often provocative exploration of “the mental
life of modern times” that is plainly reminiscent of the great essays of
Montaigne. As James himself reminds us in his introduction: “It has always been
a part of the definition of humanism that true learning has no end in view
except its own furtherance.” Read these essays and marvel; read these essays
and think.
Peter
Adam Nash
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