Jan Assmann’s quick point on René Girard:
“We owe to René Girard the idea that religion is the contrary of violence, with his very remarked theses on the end of violence, expressed in an amazingly resounding way in Violence and the Sacred, and then in a series of other studies. It is therefore disturbing to notice that the return of so-called religion, meaning the strength of religious movements in today’s world, did not lead to pacification but, much to the contrary, to a terrible increase in violence and conflict. [...] What I’m interested in is the possibility of deactivating a certain type of texts which, in the hands of fundamentalists, can very well stir up a hornet’s nest. ” (from Jan Assmann, French preface to Violence et Monothéisme, Bayard, 2009, p. 7-9)
Perhaps Jan Assmann’s take on monotheism is among the finest antidotes against the intellectuals of the civilizational apocalypse (Girard was caught at his best here). The English translation of Jan Assmann’s The Price of Monotheism should be out in November — that’s a response to critics following Moses The Egyptian (see also, in English, Of God and Gods). Recommended.
The verb “to modernize” is very ambiguous. Sometimes it means “to do things better”, other times it means “to remove those things and get rid of them altogether”, other times it just means “to make those things sellable and see if you can get some money out of them”. In this last case, “to modernize” often equates “to valuate”.
French public administrations are partaking, in a quite imaginative way, of the modernizing impetus that characterizes contemporary advanced liberal democracies. Here is an outstanding example:
“Just as any other economic actor, the state possesses immaterial assets: licenses, patents, electromagnetic frequencies, databases and know-how. With a state agency for immaterial heritage, the state can valuate such assets.” (from “Le patrimoine immatériel de l’Etat, des richesses méconnues à valoriser”, Portail de la modernisation de l’Etat, April 16 2009)
The initiative includes, for instance, the implementation of fees to shoot movies in monuments, castles and other state-owned premises (between 3000 and 6000 euros a day for shooting in military terrains).
But, since the notion of “immaterial asset” is fortunately very large, this initiative should remain open to further suggestions such as, for instance, a fee for posing next to the head of the state.
Financial stress testing is becoming a political issue (see “Bank objections delay strest tests” and “BofA and Citi in last push on stress tests”, Financial Times, May 1, May 3 2009). Accordingly, the very problem of the release and usage of the results of stress tests is put to the test: a leak to the media is, in a way, a sort of a political experiment (see subsequent blogging by Brad DeLong, John Hempton, Yves Smith and Paul Krugman). The polity of testing is a very serious thing (even in finance). Will stress testers end up appointing test diplomats?
(Or test political commissars.)
Readers interested in observing the behavior of historians of economics massively engaged in a collective endeavor can have a look at the thread on “Very famous economists who have died in the last 30 years” (second week here) initiated by the very entrepreneurial and astute David Colander in the discussion list of the Societies for the History of Economics (SHOE). It’s for a calendar, apparently. Anyway, it’s very interesting.
More than twenty years after France’s terrorist attack on the Rainbow Warrior, the French national nuclear intelligence bunch seems to be as alert as ever:
“Two senior executives at French state energy giant Electricité de France (EDF) have been charged on suspicion of spying on Greenpeace, a judicial official said Tuesday. EDF security chiefs Pierre François and Pierre Durieux are charged with conspiring to hack into computer systems including at the environmental group, the official said, confirming a report on the Mediapart website. A computer expert is also charged in the case along with Thierry Lorho, the head of private detective firm Kargus Consultant, and a third unnamed person, the official said. Both executives deny knowingly hacking into a computer system, but the computer expert has admitted the charge, the judicial official said. EDF confirmed on Tuesday that an investigation had been opened for “fraudulent intrusion into computer systems” and that a search had been carried out on its premises. But the energy giant said it was a victim of the detective firm Kargus, and that it had registered as a civil plaintiff in the case, a spokesman told AFP. A source close to the investigation told AFP that Kargus had signed a contract to provide unspecified “services” for EDF.” (from “EDF bosses probed for spying on Greenpeace”, AFP, March 31 2009)
Well, no hard feelings. There were no bombs this time, after all.
This blog’s lasting advice: in times of crisis, learn Spanish with El Roto. This month’s selection: “We won’t tolerate disorder against disorder!” (here), “All this time struggling against the system, and now it falls apart alone” (here), “When things turned bad, magicians of finance took their hats off and disapeared” (here), “A financial consultant taking his ’stuff’ back” (here).
Christophe de Margerie, CEO of Total, expresses the following opinion on today’s strikes in France:
“It’s a big sign that people don’t know where they are, they don’t know what they want. [...] They are lost.” (from “Strikers protest French economic strategy”, International Herald Tribune, March 19 2009)
It is very sad that people are lost. It is much better not to be lost. Total is not lost, and this is very good. The lost people are actually very jealous about Total not being lost, and are consequently angry about Total:
“Many people are angry that big companies like the oil giant Total is making staff redundant while simultaneously announcing record profits, the BBC’s Emma Jane Kirby in Paris says.” (from “New nationwide strike hits France”, BBC News, March 19 2009)
But this is wrong. The reason why this anger is wrong is that it exposes a lack in the mastery of contradiction. Instead, these people should examine the contradictory aspects present in all things, and thus learn from Total.
Did Christophe de Margerie study Mao during his B-School years, or what?
It has often been said, quite convincingly, that capitalism cannot survive without some sort of a “spirit” on top of it. But what kind of a spirit is this? You can see there in that video some business school kids getting some fairly effective doses of moral integration that will make their corporate fate more tolerable (for a comment on this initiative at HEC, the most prestigious business school in France, see “Le net, arme de séduction”, Le Point, February 12 2009). As convincingly suggested in a recent post, entertainment is today’s most legitimate substitute for economics in business education. But what is most interesting, from a social-scientific viewpoint, is that the right theoretical pitch is not Max Weber or Emile Durkheim anymore, but rather Salvador Dalí.
The initial hearing of Duch, the first out of five “senior Khmer Rouge leaders” to appear as defendants in front of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), started this week. To some, this is an occasion to ask a question of political arithmetics: why five only? And why should this one go first? Peter Maguire has a couple of interesting thoughts in this respect:
“Unlike the Khmer Rouge political leaders who continue to deny knowledge of atrocities and even of Tuol Sleng Prison, Duch is now an evangelical Christian who has stoically accepted his fate, admitted his guilt, and taken responsibility for his actions. [...] Some speculate that the Cambodian government is serving up this easily convicted thug as a sacrificial lamb in the hopes that the other over-80 defendants won’t live long enough to see the inside of the courtroom. If nothing else, we might finally learn whether or not there were “Chinese advisors” inside Tuol Sleng.” (from “Brother Duch in the dock”, International Herald Tribune, February 12 2009)
UN prosecutor Robert Petit has expressed the need to carry out further criminal investigations and possibly issue more indictments, but Chea Leang, his Cambodian counterpart in the “mixed” tribunal, said this could dangerously jeopardize the country’s political stability. Maguire adds: “If nothing else, the UN’s attempt to broaden this criminal inquiry will serve both as a test of the mixed tribunal’s legitimacy and its ability to function as a court”.
But the test is also on how much political “political justice” should or should not be. As aptly put for instance by this blogger, who quotes Maguire’s piece, Chea Leang’s (or, perhaps more exactly, Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen’s) reluctance to massive international justice can be interpreted as a case for “political interference” in the tribunal (negative connotation for “political” here). However, Maguire seems to be using the word “political” in a rather different (slightly positive) sense when he claims, before quoting political theorist Otto Kirchheimer, that “what remains to be seen is whether or not the Cambodian prime minister has the political will to try the Khmer Rouge political leaders”.
So the question remains. Is a political interference a threat to justice? Or is justice as such, at least in part, a political interference?
