kquenzer

“There is a story though; at parties, she was known to be found on her own, lying on a couch or a bed, expressionless.” The three panelists from Bard College peppered their discussion of Ms. Arendt with anecdotes of her life. The Thursday night, November 12th, discussion celebrated the newly published book, “Thinking in the Dark: Arendt on Ethics and Politics.”

Roger Berkowitz, the book’s editor, explained that his idea for “Thinking in Dark Times” was born at an Arendt conference at Bard College, where she taught and is buried. Berkowitz described the book as “ecumenical,” as it is a compilation of essays from scholars around the world. Some of the essays include: “Reflections on Antisemitism” by Christopher Hitchens, “Thinking in Dark Times” by Drucilla Cornell, and “Exile Reading” by Reinhard Jaube. The book also includes photographs of Arendt and photographs of her archives.

A professor of political theory at Bard College explained that Hannah Arendt believed that it is only in losing yourself in thought that you can find yourself. That is, in engrossing ourselves in thought, we can find answers. Berkowitz noted that Hannah called this type of thinking “the two in one,” referring to two actions that should take place during this type of thinking: a dialogue with ourselves and an understanding our capabilities and opinions. These actions allow us to confidently make judgment calls on the occurrences in our world. For Arendt, thinking in the manner of “the two in one” allowed her to voice her opinion on the Holocaust and the banality of evil.

The banality of evil, as Arendt called it, was one of the main topics of the panelists’ discussion. To Arendt, in many cases, the evil-doer is commonplace. He or she does evil by conforming. He or she does not think in “the two in one.” One of the panelists explained that “dark times” in the new book’s title refers to “the darkness that comes from the light of chatter and triviality.”

The banal evil exists in these dark times because of peoples’ willingness to conform, as many choose to ignore societal problems despite the need for change. Consequently, they perpetuate and make these problems worse. Thus, Arendt concludes that thinking in “the two and one” is a way through these dark times.

The event at Book Culture left me pondering Arendt’s ideas, and I am now further investigating her philosophy. The event, however, also left me confused. What is the primary goal of “Thinking in Dark Times”? Also, can thinking “in the two in one” still lead some to act in a way that is morally detrimental to society? It seemed that the panelists’ comments and the question and answer session did little to explain the ways in which society can adopt Arendt’s philosophy.

“Thinking in Dark Times: Arendt on Ethics and Politics”

Fordham University Press

$28

A Starbucks Karnak Café is not. It is a coffee house in the true, Enlightenment sense. Set in Egypt in 1967, the regulars in Naguib Mahfouz’s Karnak Café discuss life and politics unendingly. There is, however, one, rather obvious difference between Karnak and other coffee houses.

 Large numbers of the Karnak-goers disappear sporadically. The narrator, who has a Holmesian streak, uncovers the reason for these disappearances through conversations with two of the missing café patrons. He learns that many of them had been imprisoned multiple times by a revolutionary who suspected their dissent.

 The narrator’s conversations are the basis of the novellas four parts, each one named for the interviewee or the main character of that chapter. Juxtaposing descriptions of time spent in prison with chatty coffee shop scenes, perhaps Mahfouz wished to convey both the effectiveness and limitations of political talk.

 Readers sense the political nature of the text early, as the narrator begins to retell the story of the people he has met at the Karnak Café. The first person he meets is server Qurunfula, whom he recognizes as a famous Egyptian belly dancer. She was the first to modernize belly dancing, yet she ruefully remarks that few remember this.

Trying to ease her despair, he reminds Qurunfula, “Sometimes nations are afflicted with a corporate loss of memory, but it never lasts forever” (6). The narrator’s comment sounds an alarm to readers, warning them of the crisis that has afflicted Egypt, namely the Six-Day War.

 Qurunfula’s reply complicates things, “That’s all very well…but those are empty words” (6). Her reply points out the narrator’s passivity in rebelling. He listens and comforts, yet does little to actively participate in the revolution. While the narrator is aware of the political situation in his country and seems to long for some type of cultural revolution, his words are as Qurunfula says, empty.

 Karnak patrons fill the café with their deceptively weak words. This is the dichotomy that lies at the heart of Mahfouz’s text. The revolutionary characters who spend their days chatting and drinking coffee mentally participate in the war, yet their role is ineffective. The novella’s coffee house setting is perfect for fostering such a dichotomy.

Ex-prisoner Zaynab Diyab explains that she took part in the demonstrations on the ninth and tenth of June because she could no longer “tolerate having to shoulder responsibility” (78). She took action, yet when all of the café goers return at the novella’s end, the ranting remains the same –communism, democracy, socialism–an inundation of empty suggestions.

 “The entire matter needs further study,” notes the narrator in two variations twice in the novella (72). Both times, he says it in reference to the rebellion started by Egyptians who were disheartened with the state of their nation. The narrator’s passive statement has merit, but yet again, it is empty of action, leaving readers to ponder the current ramifications of such unconstructive, banal statements.

 Khalid Safwan, the trouble-causing revolutionary is both frightening and appealing. He imprisoned many of the young, revolutionary minded coffee drinkers, suspecting that they might be communists. Safwan, however, is much like the revolutionaries that he captures. In fact, they share the similar political ideology.

 The difference between Safwan and those he imprisons is that while their actions remain weak and their words empty, his actions are powerful and in many ways effective. Can we hate him for his wrongful actions or praise him for his example?

 The story’s context poses difficulties for readers unfamiliar with the Six-Day War. The book’s translator, Roger Allen, briefly contextualizes Karnak in the afterword:

 ”To state the atmosphere in Egypt in the period after the total defeat in the June War of 1967 is to indulge in a massive understatement…it was not merely the scale of defeat and the loss of land…but equally, if not more important, the fact that the entire authority structure of the Arab World had been caught red-handed in the act of systematically lying for the entire six-day course of the conflict” (94).

 The despair present in the book is poignant. First readers meet a disenchanted Qurunfula. Then they learn of the painful experiences of two Karnak patrons. Regardless of one’s knowledge of the Six-Day War, most readers will understand the feeling of defeat that the characters experience.

 A quick history lesson online or in an encyclopedia is helpful, yet Mahfouz’s message reaches far beyond the Sinai Peninsula. He warns readers of the necessity for action and powerful dialogue in order to advance culturally, through the will of a nation’s people. Isma’il al-Shaykh explains it properly to the narrator:

“I’ve been constantly surprised by the power and freedom that the opposition always had and also by the role played by the Egyptian judiciary. It wasn’t a period of undiluted evil. Quite the contrary, there was a whole series of intellectual trends that deserved to continue, and indeed to grow and flourish. It is the very fact that such features have been systematically overlooked that has contributed to our defeat” (51).

 Mahfouz provides readers with an intimate analysis of Egypt during the Six-Day War. His characters’ remarks on their nation’s needs remain relevant to many countries in the Arab World, and more specifically, to countries in the Middle East, e.g. Iran. During such struggles, citizens, much like the ones at the Karnak Café, must put their talk into action. At times, they must speak less and act more.

 While cafes allow jittery visitors, or in some cases residents, to rant for hours about the government and its injustices, at some point, the cup must come down, and the caffeine must stop pumping through one’s veins. Through the subtleness of a quiet, passive narrator, juxtaposed with a more outspoken “villain,” Mahfouz warns readers of the dangers of a chat room.

 Mahfouz, Naguib. Karnak Café. New York: Anchor Books, 2007. 

“In this decisive moment in the history of civilization it is inconceivable and unacceptable that the moans of Mankind should die out in the void. There is no doubt that Mankind has at last come of age, and our era carries the expectations of entente between the Super Powers. The human mind now assumes the task of eliminating all causes of destruction and annihilation. And just as scientists exert themselves to cleanse the environment of industrial pollution, intellectuals ought to exert themselves to cleanse humanity of moral pollution. It is both our right and duty to demand of the big leaders in the countries of civilization as well as their economists to affect a real leap that would place them into the focus of the age.” 

-Naguib Mahfouz, Nobel Lecture (Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech), 1988

Israeli Etgar Keret’s most recent collection of stories, The Girl on the Fridge, named for one of the stories in the collection, is a compilation of his new and old work. Keret’s writing has recently been featured on NPR’s This American Life. He also directed the feature-length film Jellyfish, which won the Camera d’Or award at Cannes.

On the cover of the book, Salman Rushdie calls Keret “A brilliant writer…completely unlike any writer I know. The voice of the next generation.” It seems that Rushdie is right in proclaiming Keret the voice of the next generation, as Keret’s anecdotal short stories seem ready for a fresh-faced and curious readership, open to the characters and their lessons in each story. This readership, however, is either too young yet to read or belongs to a smaller, newer subculture. (more…)

To Pamuk, Istanbul is a city of hüzün, or melancholy, and while its inhabitants can fight this mood, they will eventually succumb to it. What is most striking about Pamuk’s memoir Istanbul is his ability to define himself through his city. He poignantly writes with allegiance to his notion of hüzün, understanding it as an almost compulsory element of living in an ancient, fallen city.

Not only is hüzün inevitable, to Pamuk it the force behind his own work as well as the work of all other Istanbullu (the people of Istanbul). He explains, “If hüzün has been central to Istanbul culture, poetry, and everyday life over the past two centuries, if it dominates our music, it must be a least partly because we see it as an honor” (91). Pamuk understands hüzün to be a definitive characteristic of Istanbullu because of the ancient city’s triumphant past and somewhat dismal present, which began after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

As Pamuk explains, first used in the Quran in reference to the year Muhammad lost his wife Hatice and his uncle Ebu Talip, hüzün denotes a melancholy that is collective rather than solitary. Pamuk reveals to his readers how the hüzün he shares with other Istanbullu has become crucial for his career path. As a means of explaining and documenting the presence of hüzün in his city and in its inhabitants, Pamuk incorporates photographs of a crumbling Istanbul and his complicated family as well as anecdotes of artists and writers who have influenced him.

One of the most interesting writers that Pamuk discusses is the Turkish writer Resat Ekram Koçu, who devoted a large portion of his life to documenting the everyday in Istanbul in his Istanbul Encyclopedia. While many have forgotten this author, others continue to praise his inexhaustible work. Pamuk explains, “Without falling into the strange habit of praising Istanbul’s strangeness, we acknowledge that we love Koçu because he ‘failed’… Koçu’s most beautiful and profound pages are the ones that remain between worlds, and (again, like the others) the price he paid for his originality was loneliness” (167). From documenting “a skilled child acrobat between the ages of 14 and 15 encountered between 1955 and 1956” to homes along the Bosphorus River to the junk dealers who stood outside of the men’s section of the hammams, Koçu’s attempt at writing a complete encyclopedia of life in Istanbul failed, yet those who remember him do so because of his dedication to the dismal and banal of Istanbul (160).

To Pamuk, it was Koçu’s sensitivity to the hüzün of Istanbul and its innate presence in each Istanbullu that makes him notable and praiseworthy. Pamuk thus understands success in terms different from most of his western readers. Rather than associating success with happiness, he perceives melancholy as a means by which one can obtain a greater understanding of oneself, one’s home, and one’s peers.

Pamuk notes that in realizing and embracing this notion of hüzün, “The melancholy I itched for–and would later claim¬–that mood that spoke to me of defeat, obliteration, and degradation, also allowed me a respite from all the rules that needed to be learned, all the mathematics problems that needed to be solved…” (300). It is in unraveling the character of Istanbullu that readers find themselves questioning their understanding and opinion of melancholy.

While it is not technically correct to say that Istanbul is a part of the Arab World, Pamuk writes of themes that have relevance among countries of the Arab World. First, the majority of people from both regions have a common faith, Islam. Additionally, the Ottoman Empire ruled over Turkey as well as parts of the Arab World, including areas of Tunisia, Sudan, Egypt, present-day Israel, present-day Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, and Iraq.

During the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire, both Turkey and the Arab World witnessed defeat and economic disparity. Currently, the economic, political, and social struggles that take place in these countries due to conflict within and outside of each country’s or territory’s borders or disputed borders also yield to collective melancholies.

Perhaps hüzün alludes to a common ground in these cultures, dating back to the first use of the word hüzün in the Quran. The use of this word in a text that has defined law and language in countries that are part of the Arab World illustrates the very way it permeates Arab and Islamic culture, that is, through art, literature, and daily life. In both Turkey and the Arab World, it seems that hüzün is perhaps a necessary and constructive presence in people’s lives.

As Pamuk points out in light of the Sufi interpretation of hüzün, “it is the absence, not the presence, of hüzün that causes him [the Sufi follower] distress. It is the failure to experience hüzün that leads him to feel it; he suffers because he has not suffered enough, and it is by following this logic to its conclusion that Islamic culture has come to hold hüzün in high esteem” (91).

Istanbul. Pamuk, Orhan. Vintage, New York: 2004.