Memory, tinged with nostalgia, is like those old photo albums full of special moments and smiling faces. However, every generation has witnessed, directly or indirectly, the ravages of war. When our role was limited to that of simple spectators at a safe distance, when we return to this changing territory called “Yesterday” we relegate to the background bloodbaths that still define the world today: Rwanda, Lebanon, the ‘Afghanistan, Bosnia, the Persian Gulf, Chechnya or Somalia, if I think about my adolescence. What is left of the fallout from mines, rifles or machetes? Among other things, the silence of the dead persists, the ineffable, what is hidden or censored, as pointed out by Antonio Monegal, the last National Essay Award winner for Como el aire que respiramos. If you were wondering here, in a broad sense, what culture is and why it serves, in the recent The silence of war reminds us that war conflicts, far from being an anomaly, are a constant in our culture as another (albeit violent) form of communication. Throughout its pages, the professor of Theory of Literature at the UPF dismantles the deep-rooted (and false) dichotomy between war and culture.
Despite the punctual presence of armed struggles and battles in the media, and the consumption of products on the subject, from cinema to video games, war remains a taboo, and its discussion, when reality requires it, is wanted in a corner in diplomatic forums. Numb reason breeds monsters, as does our inability to imagine scenarios. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the surprise was general. Similarly, the possibility of an assault on the Capitol also seemed unlikely. It is even more worrying when, anointed with a naïve, if not opportunistic, pacifism, on the right and left, facing the next European elections, yet another fear, that of war (as if this was not a reality which already concerns us) to try to slow down support for Ukraine. When was it taken for granted that self-defense was a military escalation, or that shooting down missiles aimed at civilian areas was equivalent to “threatening” the aggressor?
Who doesn’t want peace? Last year, Salman Rushdie, in his acceptance speech for the Peace Prize at the Frankfurt Book Fair, pointed out that everyone has their own interpretation of this concept. “For Ukraine, peace goes beyond the simple cessation of hostilities. It means, as it should be, the restoration of the usurped territory and the guarantee of its sovereignty. For the enemies of Ukraine, peace means the surrender of this country. Two incompatible definitions for the same word. Peace for Israel and for the Palestinians still seems more remote. With his characteristic sagacity, Rushdie, after reviewing the fables of peace to confirm that they did not carry good news, referred to the two blockbuster films of the summer: Oppenheimer remembered that the final capitulation came with two bombings atomic, while Barbie offered a vision of “indestructible peace and indissoluble happiness, in a world where every day is perfect, but in a pink plastic one”. By the way, not even dry peace is a guarantee of human rights, as is evident in neighboring countries such as Belarus, although it would be more accurate to say that a dictatorship is a state of internal war.
Rushdie, from whom Cuchillo now happily comes to us. Meditaciones después de un attempto asesinato, written after the attack caused him to lose his right eye and the mobility of his left hand, reminds us: “Peace is something difficult to achieve. And yet we yearn for it, not only the great peace that comes at the end of war, but also the little peace in our private lives.” In a recent interview, he admitted that two decades ago he considered religious extremism to be the greatest threat to free societies. However, today populism, demagoguery and authoritarianism are the real dangers, because they seek to “destroy democracy from within”.
In his latest essay, a celebration of love against the blindness of fanaticism, as well as a response of art against violence, he tells us: “We are engaged in a world war of conflicting narratives, a battle between incompatible versions of reality, and it is crucial to learn how to fight this war”.
