(originally published as “Savater and State Melancholia: On Spanish History and its
Hipnóticamente se establece que el retrato y el modelo de sociedad que
están vendiendo es el que interesa al conjunto de la sociedad y no
fundamentalmente al sector emergente, que es el que respalda esta operación.
Hay una coincidencia estratégica para inculcar una ideología de la supuesta
modernidad como única posibilidad de modernidad y como único objetivo. Esto se
vende como una necesidad colectiva, como una necesidad de bien social
generalizado.
Manuel Vázquez Montalván “Radiografía de la sospecha.”
At a moment when the discipline of
history has been subjected to serious criticism (White, Lacapra, Spivak) and
the death of the subject and of humanist discourse has brought about “the end
of history” (Foucault), the reemergence of historical discourses and practices
throughout the cultural spectrum, from historical novels to biography, from PBS
documentaries to War reenactments, from multiculturalist history to the History
channel, can only mean one thing: history is reemerging with a synergy and
vengeance that may only be characterized as uncanny (Freud, “The Uncanny”). It
appears as if we had repressed history for too long under the new irruption of
consumer culture and globalization. Consumerism is inherently ahistorical but,
at the same time, is always eager to consume “retro” objects; it finds a
sublime pleasure in the fashion of “antiquing,” now made accessible to the masses
by the likes of Martha Stewart. Even the events of
In this global context, the Spanish case may be crucial in elucidating several aspects of this uncanny return of the historical. Here, I will focus on Spain’s best-known philosopher and intellectual, Fernando Savater, for his work perfectly exemplifies this contradictory return of a repressed history. Eduardo Subirats captures Savater’s centrality when he concludes: “[L]a voluminosa, enérgica y airosa obra intelectual de Fernando Savater sirve… como la expresión sintomáticamente más articulada de estos avatares que afectan a un tiempo a la intelligentsia y a la política españolas” (Después 102). As I will elaborate below, Savater is a most passionate intellectual in his defense of an ahistorical state that remains the sole universal guarantor of democracy and individual rights beyond and above any historical reality. Yet he is also the most outspoken philosopher in his historical vindication of the Enlightenment and of its project at a time when many contemporary realities (globalization, nationalisms, new social movements…) threaten both the enlightened subject and the state.
In order to situate Savater in both contemporary Spanish history and the global return of repressed history, I will begin by making an unexpected filmic reference, which then will allow me to sketch a tentative psychoanalytical reading of both Spanish politics and globalization. The top box-office blockbuster of twentieth-century Spanish film history, Torrente o el brazo tonto de la ley (Santiago Segura, 1998), points to the return of an abject and unresolved form of Francoism, under the new guise of a delusional or psychotic fascist cop whom we get to love by the end of the film, precisely because, in his present delusion, in his being out of touch with the present, he allows us to desire him as a harmless funny objet trouvé of Francoism. The film ultimately makes Francoism an object of contemporary Spanish melancholia (Freud, “Melancholia”), a sort of Francoism malgré lui-même. Obviously, Torrente, the psychotic fascist cop, stands for the unresolved historical situation in which “el pacto con el olvido”—the tacit yet central agreement among political forces that allowed the democratic transition of the postdictatorship—has placed us all in the delusional aftermath of 1992: we are all Torrente. When we thought we could finally move on, in a new, globalized, trendy, democratic Spain, the past, repressed history, is knocking at our door, and we feel a withdrawal (Vilarós), a traumatic condition (Moreiras), or a ghostly state (Labanyi, Constructing) that we do not know how to negotiate either politically or historically.
If the film Torrente makes us feel nostalgic for a fascist cop, then, in retrospect, the victory of the right-wing Partido Popular (PP) in the elections of 1996 seems to be a historical event, a historical corrective, for which our political desire was yearning: Give us Franco! Give us historical continuity rather than democratic breaks, even if such a demand makes us melancholic fascists! To finish this quick radiography of Spanish history, allow me to equate this unconscious political desire for anti-democratic historical continuity with ETA’s claim—made in 1999 after breaking a truce of fourteen months —that “nothing has changed” (Unzueta 431-39). For ETA, too, the historical continuity of the Spanish state from Francoism to our days is a fact and, thus, Basque nationalists have to continue to fight for the independence of the Basque Country. In short, there is a shared Spanish symptomatology in which everybody—from PP to ETA—enjoys the historical continuity from Francoism to our days.
This “enjoyment of
the historical Spanish symptom,” if I may play on Zizek’s coinage (Enjoy), is crucial since such a yearning
for a highly anti-democratic, fascistic continuity in Spanish history also
begins to affect new realities, such as immigration from the Third World
(mainly Africa and Latin America). In mainstream Spanish political discourse—in
the newly reorganized “Spanish common sense”— racism begins to surface in ways
that even the most liberal minds cannot help but justify and approve (Goytisolo
13). This “new racism” creates a historical continuity between the new
“democratic Spaniards” and those “cristianos viejos” of the Renaissance who saw
themselves morally fit to cleanse the Spanish empire of infidel presences. Of
course, this time, the legitimation of the new global “just war” against
infidels is economic: “nobody is
racist, we just want to keep our jobs.” However, and as the new popularity of
Le Pen in France makes it dreadfully clear, this is a very powerful racialized
ideology of “justice.” The different surveys conducted among Spanish youth are
indicative of this situation. Two surveys from 1995 and 2000, respectively,
carried out by the Youth Institute, a governmental agency, already contain
racist phraseology in the questions themselves. Among other inquiries, the
surveys poll the young people on the issue of whether immigration will be
negative or positive “para la raza” (Escarraga). The survey shows strong alarm
(“preocupante”) about the fact that in 1995 55% of youth thought that immigration
was “perjudicial para la raza” and, in 2000, that percentage still remains at
30%; nevertheless it is phrased in such a way as to demonstrate an
“improvement” in racial relations in Spain. Yet, as the sociologist Domingo
Comas contends, this “improvement” simply reflects a refinement in and an
adaptation to racist attitudes on the part of young people (Efe). In Comas’s words: “Históricamente ha
habido una situación mala de intolerancia, que hace pensar a los que tienen más
de 47 años que es obligatorio ser tolerante, pero los jóvenes funcionan de otra
manera: ‘no me voy [the youth] a mostrar agresivo o racista con él [the
immigrant], porque quiero que venga a mi casa a limpiar o a mi empresa a
trabajar, pero él en su sitio y yo, en el mío’” (Efe).
In order to
continue with this fast, pitiless political psychoanalysis of the return of
history as Spain’s desire for non-democratic continuity, it is important to
remember that the racist discourse of economics (“the just war of economics”)
has been deployed previously against other internal Spanish ethnic minorities,
such as the Basques and the Catalans. For, as everybody knows, and even Savater
himself argues: “they are taking all the riches of Spain and keeping them to
themselves”; and, in his words, “son los que más tienen” (Perdonen 207). Historically speaking, Savater’s words represent a
Renaissance ideology of difference that was originally deployed against Jews
and “Moors,” later against afrancesados
and liberals, Republicans, Basques and Catalans, and, most recently, against
immigrants. It is the racism of justifying hatred based on social difference
(racial, ethnic, class-based) and on the premise that “the other has more:”
that is, Jews, Basques, and others enjoy more or, as in the case of immigrants,
enjoy more than they deserve. As Américo Castro concluded already, during his
exile in the USA after the Civil War, the core characteristic of Hispanicity is
its inability to deal with otherness (“un perpetuo solipsismo”) (605). Although
Castro does not resort to psychoanalysis, he does nevertheless point to the
historical formation of a “psychological apparatus” (“conciencia,” “castillo de
la morada íntima”) that is resilient to difference (605). As he states in his España en su historia:
Lo hispánico vendría a ser, si no hemos errado nuestra senda, algo como un “ego viventia mea vivo”, un perpetuo solipsismo, exclusivo de cuanto no yazca dado espontáneamente en la conciencia de estar viviendo. Es inútil, entonces, que el objeto exterior e ignoto pretenda interrumpir como un intruso en el castillo de la morada íntima, con la demanda de ser salvado, fijado en conocimiento…. El español ha vivido como un drama, como una elasticidad y una contracción hacia dentro de sí mismo, ése su importar de moros, judíos, franceses o de quienquiera que haya sido. Los retornos de las grandes salidas al exterior han solido señalarse por sangrientas catástrofes, en una alternancia de sí y no que hemos considerar como otra de las funciones esenciales del vivir hispano. (605-6)
Therefore, this analysis of the return of repressed history in contemporary Spain needs to address the problem of social difference and its Spanish political logic. As Subirats claims, following Castro, a reconsideration of Spanish history is paramount to establishing a different foundation for contemporary Spain:
Ningún proyecto socialmente democrático que verdaderamente pretenda contemplar la pluralidad y autonomía de las culturas históricas que han poblado la Península Ibérica, desde sus juderías y sus mezquitas medievales, hasta lo que queda en pie de formas de vida regionales y municipales, podrá desarrollarse en armónico concierto, si no se destruye desde su misma raíz histórica la quimérica identidad de una España inmaculada, transcendente y sustancial, creada por las cruzadas de reconquista de la Iglesia de Roma, redefinida por una larga guerra civil contra hispanoárabes e hispanojudíos, y cerrada a lo largo de una duradera historia negra de represión intelectual, miseria social y exilio. (Después 147)
Although the terms “quimérica identidad de una España immaculada” do not reflect a psychoanalytical concern, they do, nevertheless, suggest a negation of otherness (“España inmaculada”) and, thus, of the other’s enjoyment.
It is also important to remember that this ideology of the other’s greater enjoyment is predicated on a moment of globalization and Europeanization, whereby the Spanish middle class is fading away and a new elite, a sort of globalized Spanish upper-middle class—so uncanny in its resemblance to Galdós’s portrayals of the haute bourgeoisie of the nineteenth-century Spanish Restoration—is enjoying wealth more than any other class. Yet this new elite class receives the adoring and glamorous approval of the media, especially of the tabloids. Although I will come back to this issue, it is important to emphasize the domestic nature of this new hostility towards multiculturalism, for when it comes to defending the Spanish state against the advance of capitalism in Europe, President Aznar himself becomes the most staunch defender of “state multiculturalism,” as when he argues for an European project based on “una constitucionalización pluralista, que tenga en cuenta las especificidades de cada Estado” (Agencias).
The ideology of the other’s enjoyment must be analyzed historically in detail. To date, the above political psychoanalytic incursion has aimed to emphasize the fact that the uses of history in Spain are connected with discourses of difference, mainly geo- and bio-political differences. Thus, these two aspects (history/difference) must be addressed and contemplated simultaneously if we do not want to slip into historical oblivion or blatant racism/fascism à la Le Pen, which will ultimately erase both history and geo/biopolitical difference.
In this context Savater’s work is central, for he captures and embodies this tension more centrally than any other Spanish intellectual. Yet it is also important to underscore that Savater’s case is not isolated; it reflects the situation of hegemonic intellectual discourse throughout Europe and the first world. From Jürgen Habermas’s “constitutional patriotism” (203-36) to Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” to Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations,” a new globalized form of democratic liberalism, neoliberalism, is being upheld as the only valid political future and the sole possiblility of salvation from barbarism. In short, Savater’s discourse is a part of a hegemonic first-world intellectual discourse on history and political difference. Ultimately, the hegemonic first-world’s difficult relationship with history is at stake and, as I will argue below, this tension is negotiated and legitimized through a discursive structure I will denominate state melancholia.
Fernando Savater is a philosopher and writer who began to consolidate his career in the Basque Country (Basque University, Zorroaga campus) and was known mainly for his writings on ethics, such as La tarea del héroe (1981). Early in his intellectual trajectory, his strong convictions about democracy led him to confront the issues of nationalism and statehood, as reflected in his Contra las patrias (1984, henceforth Contra). As he became more involved in politics, he emerged as one of the key intellectuals of the Socialist regime (1982-96) and, as a result, moved to Madrid’s Complutense University, the most prestigious university of the Spanish state, as the holder of the new chair of philosophy. His Ética como amor propio (1988) represents his most academic work, which has legitimized him as a philosophy professor and as a public intellectual. As Paul Julian Smith concludes: “Savater is perhaps the best-known and most representative intellectual of the Socialist era in Spain” (75). Yet, as the problem of Basque terrorism, rather than disappearing, came to be one of the central concerns of the Socialist government—which led partly to its electoral defeat in 1996 as a result of the GAL scandal—Savater became more concerned with Basque violence and dedicated progressively more of his writings to this issue. Even after the right-wing PP took power in 1996, Savater continued to be the key spokesperson in Madrid against Basque terrorism and, later on, against Basque nationalism, including democratic nationalism. As a result, he co-founded the anti-violence movement Basta Ya (which received the European Sakharov award), and his latest work against nationalism and terrorism, Perdonen las molestias (2001), rose to the top of the Spanish best-seller charts in the year 2001.
Perhaps the most important change in Savater’s work centers on his thinking about the state, whereas his understanding of the individual subject and democracy has not changed significantly. His conception of the state has shifted precisely as a result of his confrontation with Basque violence and nationalism, which has also made him a target of it; Savater has been under police protection in recent years. In short, the state, terrorism, and nationalism have become personal issues for Savater in the ethical sense in which he understands the personal (Ética).
His early works
focused on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and, as a result, they evidence an
anti-totalitarian and libertarian stance, bordering on anarchism. Thus, in his Contra las patrias he writes about the state: “Uno de los temas que
me han ocupado más permanentemente a través de toda mi tarea intelectual es el
de la institutionalización de un poder separado—Estado—en la colectividad
humana, y las pérdidas y sujeciones que impone a los socios” (Contra 20-21). His early take on the
state is libertarian: “Quienes nos sentimos de uno u otro modo vinculados a la
tradición política libertaria… aceptamos como ideales efectivos a medio y largo
plazo la autogestión social generalizada… la abolición de las distinciones
permanentes entre gobernantes y gobernados” (Contra 21). From his early libertarian position he declares that
the state is “un nudo complejo que ninguna espada alejandrina y voluntarista
puede solventar sin merma” (Contra
21).
In his problematization of the state, at this point in time, Savater admits that “la unidad de España es más bien un fracaso histórico y, todo lo más, un reto político” (Contra 76). More specifically, and with regard to the Basque case, he concedes that:
Lo que no llega a aceptarse es
que el nacionalismo vasco no es el capricho absurdo de unos pocos ni una
“autonomía” de esas postizas que ahora gustan tanto a los nuevos jacobinos,
sino una decisión irreversible y mayoritaria, con auténticas raíces y abonada
por años de marginación; y que nada sacará la democracia intentando cocear
contra él explícita o disimuladamente, mientras que puede ganar una baza
institucionalmente decisiva cuando se lo apropie del todo y sin recelos. (Contra 124-25)
He also adds that “nunca dudé del derecho de los vascos al pleno reconocimiento de su lengua, sus costumbres, sus peculiaridades y su autodeterminación política plural y democrática” (Contra 23-4) and even acknowledges that “la opción independentista debe ser discutida y políticamente reconocida como legítima, lo cual no quiere decir que haya que convertirla en única y obligatoria” (Contra 78). In short, the concept of the state was problematic for the libertarian Savater, and different alternatives and challenges to the state were admissible to him. The state was a historical and transitional political step toward a more libertarian self-government, as illustrated by the Basque case.
Yet his original position changed considerably, as ETA’s terrorism continued, and the Basque Government consolidated itself through an uninterrupted nationalist rule of more than twenty years. From his position in Madrid, Savater began to criticize the political and/or violent tenets of both radical and democratic nationalism in the Basque Country. At present, as his work Perdonen unequivocally states, Savater upholds the state as the only and necessary guarantor of democratic life. In the prologue to Perdonen, he clearly declares his defense of the state and of its political order when mobilizing himself against terrorism. As he states: “En este último año he participado por medio de ellos [his articles] y de mi intervención personal en el lanzamiento de la iniciativa ciudadana Basta Ya, cuya originalidad frente a otros movimientos antiterroristas es no limitarse a condenar la violencia de ETA sino apoyar también inequívocamente el Estatuto, la Constitución y el Estado de derecho español” (Perdonen 21, my emphasis). Thus Savater has moved from questioning and theorizing the state as a historic, political institution, whose limits can be negotiated or altered (late 1970s and early 1980s), to wholeheartedly embracing and legitimizing the state as the only valid political reality and horizon (late 1980s and 1990s).
When dealing with the issue of European
unification, the state remains the basis of political unity for Savater: “Por
eso juzgo preferible el Estado soberano más ‘desterritorializado’ y por tanto
más capaz de asumir derechos nómadas, con menos patria que humanidad: mejor el
Estado español que un posible Estado catalán o vasco, mejor el Estado europeo
que el Estado español, etcétera” (Perdonen
245). For him, the direct and unmediated relation between the individual
and the state is at the core of his political and ethical thinking and, thus,
as he clearly argues, “the bigger the better,” when it comes to policing any
irrational political outburst, such as nationalism. Yet, there is no conscious
effort on Savater’s part to reflect on the fact that larger state-formations
can easily lead to totalitarianism (for example, the Soviet Union, Nazi
Germany, China) or imperialism (USA), if the structure of the state is not
rethought from a postnational and global perspective (Lefort). In this context,
he concludes that a plurinational Spain is not progress, but rather, a
regression. Only a strictly
state-based division of Spain in smaller non-nationalist state-units
(“autonomías”) is acceptable to Savater: “Y la España de los nacionalismos no
es un perfeccionamiento pluralista de la España de las autonomías sino el
regreso invertido a la homogeneización franquista, pero a escala regional: el
‘una, grande y libre’ de calderilla” (Perdonen
201).
It is important to note that Savater, by claiming the final consolidation of the Spanish state, assumes that political history must be arrested in Spain. For him, the Spanish state has achieved its democratic materialization and, therefore, any type of political challenge to it can only be accepted within the limits of the state. According to him, the political agreement that regulates the Autonomous Basque Community (ABC), the state-sanctioned Estatuto, becomes the limit within which Basque citizens must conduct their political life. After recalling that only 30% of the population of the ABC voted in favor of the constitution that regulates the Estatuto, and that he himself did not vote in favor but “en blanco” (Perdonen 290), he nevertheless concludes that the Estatuto is the only and ultimate political horizon for Basque politics: “Entendimos el Estatuto de autonomía como punto de llegada, un acuerdo entre discrepantes, no como un simple escalón que, al calor de la perpetuación del terrorismo, iba a ser descartado luego como algo canijo y mediocre… ¡hasta como una imposición!” (Perdonen 256, my emphasis).
In this context, once
again, Savater discards history (nationalist or otherwise) as an element that
no longer has any bearing on present political life. Echoing Habermas, Savater
equates Basque nationalism with ethnocentrism and concludes that it is
anachronistic. Savater directly
quotes Habermas’s claim that “los apologetas de la razón étnica desconocen que
precisamente las impresionantes conquistas históricas del Estado nacional
democrático y sus principios constitucionales republicanos nos pueden ilustrar
acerca de cómo deberíamos manejar los actuales problemas relativos al
inevitable tránsito hacia formas posnacionales de socialización” (ctd. in Perdonen 201). Thus Savater maintains
that any historical claim—the importance of history in the constitution of a
state—is pointless and that it ultimately amounts to a regressive ahistorical
delusion: “Tampoco entiendo cómo pueden llamarse derechos ‘históricos’ a
prebendas que resultan inmunes a su propia abolición, al paso de los lustros, a
varias guerras civiles, a los cambios demográficos o sociales…. En todo caso,
serán ejemplo distinguido de derechos enigmáticamente ahistóricos” (Perdonen
258, my emphasis).
Even when Savater reflects
on the words of a prestigious political theorist “Carmen Martínez Bordiú, una
cima del pensamiento político comparable a Jürgen Habermas y John Rawls” and on
her conviction that “es muy partidaria del diálogo con ETA” (Perdonen 264), he dismisses the
possibility of negotiation because of the historical breach that such a
possibility represents for his theorization of an ahistorical state. Moreover,
even when Savater mentions the fact that 80% of the Basque population is
willing to dialogue with ETA, he responds by repositioning this dialogue within
the limits of the constitution and the state, so that even this dialogue is
regulated by the state, and not by the parties involved in this unresolved
Spanish history or by democratic will: “A mí no me extraña que el 80 por ciento
de la gente quiera el diálogo: lo que me parece raro es que no sean el cien por
cien. Porque bien mirado ¿cómo no va
a querer diálogo quien vota a cualquier partido? ¿No son las elecciones
precisamente el modo de elegir a quienes nos representarán en ese gran
escenario del diálogo que es un parlamento democrático?” (Perdonen 265). The only moment in which Savater accedes to the
possibility of changing the constitution, he locates the change within the
constitution: “Y ni siquiera necesito mencionar que la Constitución puede
modificarse a partir de ella misma, ya que todas las leyes, salvo las de la
naturaleza, son como las puertas: sirven tanto para entrar como para salir” (Perdonen 291).
Savater’s present claims about the Spanish state can be compared usefully to his earlier writings on the history of the Basque case and the state’s irrational reaction:
Por un lado, la articulación autonómica pretendió reparar el abuso histórico que se había hecho contra la lengua y la identidad de países tan caracterizados tradicionalmente como Vascongadas o Catalunya, y también engarzar el autogobierno de estas areas de manera positiva en el conjunto de la política nacional; pero también se quiso después contrarrestar esta particularidad ominosa extendiendo la conciencia nacionalista allí donde jamás había habido otra identidad nacional que la española y limitar por medio de una proliferación salvaje [by the state] de autonomías el alcance o la relevancia efectivas de ninguna de ellas. (Contra 77, my emphasis)
The above quote illustrates the radical change in Savater’s thought on the idea of the state and its institutions (the constitution, the Estatuto, the autonomías, etc.). As Savater came to confront the rule of Basque nationalism and ETA’s terrorism, both became a “cuestión de amor propio,” that is, ethical and political issues that affected him as a political individual. As a result, he began to legitimize the state in absolute and ahistorical terms as the only and most important materialization of democracy.
Therefore, the state becomes an ahistorical entity in Savater’s thinking and thus any other form of historicity is excluded if does not fit the political mold of the state—at which point any other form of history becomes ahistorical. From regional politics, such as the autonomías, to European unification, the state becomes the ahistorical and thus absolute guarantor of politics in Savater’s thought.
Now that I have isolated Savater’s thinking on the state, I will concentrate on the way in which Savater elaborates an ahistorical Spanish history—that is, the a/history of the state. It is important to understand why his discourse has met with such success among the Spanish public and its political constituencies—most notably the Spanish left but, lately, the right as well. In short, it is important to understand why Savater’s discourse has become hegemonic in a Spain that desires historical continuity even at the expense of democracy.
In Savater’s work, the state, this positive and atemporal political entity, stands for a complex Spanish reality, first and foremost, marked by its historicity and change: globalization, new social movements, immigration, and ethnic conflict. Thus, the state reemerges in his discourse as the positive guarantor of a political continuity that defies historical change. The state becomes the ultimate and only subject of politics, which consequently “others” any other reality not derived from the state. Libidinally speaking, the state becomes the only subject who enjoys politics and, thus, any Spanish subject, by identifying with the state, enjoys equally.
Allow me to discuss two examples in Savater’s writing: illegal immigrants and women.
In an ironical article entitled “Salvar el pellejo” (Perdonen 269-74), Savater reflects on the dangers that different groups of people—Basque people opposed to terrorism, illegal immigrants—face in the Spanish state. This article is written as a response to a letter received from a young Basque man named Asier who opposes terrorism and thus feels threatened by his radical, nationalist environment. It is important to note the way in which these different dangers are structured according to Savater’s ethics of “amor propio,” in an article written in an ironic tone:
Sobre todo no es lo mismo ver morir y saber que a uno puede tocarle que estar seguro de que sólo puede tocarle a otros, pobrecillos. Yo por ejemplo compadezco mucho a los magrebíes y subsaharianos que se ahogan cuando las pateras se hunden en el Estrecho. !Esas mujeres embarazadas, esos muchachos desesperados! Pero, claro, pese a toda mi compasión no dejo de recordar que yo no soy de los que tiene que viajar en patera en busca de una improbable prosperidad. Suspiro por ellos, pero no me quitan el sueño ni el apetito. Nunca espero verme en una triste almadía sobre las aguas traicioneras: esa desdicha es su destino, no el mío. También aquí, en Euskadi, hay quien viaja en patera y quien le compadece desde la orilla. Tú y yo estamos en la patera, amigo Asier, mientras otros lamentan nuestra suerte o incluso nos advierten de que nunca debimos embarcar… (Perdonen 270, my emphasis)
What is significant about the above quote is the rhetorical maneuver through which the global conflict of immigration is not acknowledged as part of a larger historical reality in Spain. Consequently, immigration is reduced to a metaphorical status, whereby the problem of terrorist violence becomes the primordial form of conflict. As a result of this discursive maneuver, immigration is transformed into a secondary problem of which terrorism is the true referent. Savater establishes a referential hierarchy through the way in which these two conflicts are presented and, as a result, prioritizes terrorism, that is, the violence that defies the state as such and thus legitimizes the latter as the only true subject of violence. Savater and Asier are the true immigrants who navigate on a daily basis on a patera and are thus at a permanent risk of dying without ever reaching shore.
Yet, the problem of immigration does not simply challenge the state qua state, but rather, points to the fact that globalization brings about new historical problems that defy and exceed the traditional state. But since, in Savater’s discourse, this problem becomes secondary and hierarchically inferior to the true conflict of terrorism, the new global history that immigration brings about, a history that the state cannot solve from within its modern configuration and self-legitimation, is dehistoriziced and turned into a variant of terrorist violence. Once immigration is turned into a “terrorist problem,” then the state can solve it qua state. Consequently, the state continues to legitimize itself as the only subject of violence and enjoyment, while othering global history. If the state can solve Savater’s immigration problem of being in a permanent patera, then the state can also solve the problem of illegal immigration in toto, and globalization becomes an internal problem without a new history.
The above quote is not simply coincidental or merely a rhetorical faux pas. It is, instead, a clear example of a more general way of thinking. As Savater himself acknowledges, he made a similar remark in his presentation of the movement Basta Ya in San Sebastián. A few days earlier, Arzalluz, the president of the Basque Nationalist Party or BNP (PNV/EAJ), boasted of the excess of security in the Basque Country, implying that some of the police forces could be sent to El Ejido, the southern Spanish town where conflicts between immigrant workers and locals had become escalated. In response to this provocation, Savater once again equates both situations and organizes them hierarchically, so that the problem of terrorism becomes central to any Spanish concern:
Señalé entonces que en Euskadi muchas personas no se sienten ni mucho menos sobradamente seguras, sino más bien en una situación de amenaza de sus personas y bienes comparable a la de los inmigrantes hostigados en la comarca almeriense….. Sin embargo fui reiteradamente amonestado por mi exageración (nadie me reprochó la exageración inversa, o sea que en el País Vasco ha habido ya muchos muertos entre los hostilizados y en El Ejido afortunadamente no) y me recordaron, juro que innecesariamente, que la situación económica y social de los trabajadores magrebíes es castratróficamente peor que la del común de los ciudadanos vascos. (Perdonen 211-12)
By equating the two situations—Basque terrorism and illegal immigration—Savater can then give priority to the problem of Basque violence, given the fact that the death count is higher. That is, he creates an equation whereby the death count becomes a hierarchical index of political importance and, as a result, every problem is also equated and homogeneized as a variant of the death count. Thus, once again, the state becomes the ultimate subject for the regulation and control of violence. The state is the subject that regulates the death count, whereas the global flow of capital and the ensuing economic inequalities are problems that lie outside the reach of the state and thus point to a new history that the state cannot control. In this context, Savater fails to remember the fact that many more immigrants have died trying to reach Spanish shores than there are victims of terrorism in Spain. Yet, for Savater, the former is not an internal problem of the state and, therefore, is irrelevant to his discussion of terrorism.
Finally, by equating Basque nationalism and racism, Savater once again invokes the state as the ultimate safeguard against both: “Contra la mitología de las razas o etnias, de la que se benefician los desvergonzados, la legalidad de una ciudadanía que ha de hacerse más y más cosmopolita pero que hoy sólo las institutionces estatales pueden garantizar” (Perdonen 213). Although the invocation of a future supra-state citizenship (through the word “cosmopolita” in the above quote) could be a hopeful sign of a move toward a future post-state history, it is important to quote Savater’s previous invocation in which “civilized Europe” is opposed to an external barbarism (postmodernism, globalization): “Así se destruye la idea civilizada de Europa, sustituida por una variante posmoderna del esclavismo con salsa de beatitud en el balance de resultados” (Perdonen 213). In short, for Savater, the answer to global immigration and multiculturalism lies in the civilized European state, which withstands historical, global change.
Another example of
the way in which Savater reduces historical difference to the ahistorical
reason of the state regards the issue of women’s rights. Reflecting on the
events that took place in the Basque town of Hondarribia where women were
denied the right to march in a traditional parade of military origins called Alarde,
Savater once again metaphorically equates and hierarchizes women’s problems and
terrorism: “Lo que ha ocurrido en Fuenterrabía con motivo del alarde es algo
ridículo, triste, incivilizado, absurdo… pero sobre todo muy significativo de
cómo es el país en el que ahora vivimos. Yo me atrevería a decir que constituye casi una maqueta a escala del llamado ‘conflicto vasco’” (Perdonen 279, my emphasis). In
short, women’s conflicts become a small-scale model for terrorism. For Savater
the solution to this “small-scale” problem lies in the state. He concludes the article by inviting people to
come out into the streets “para defender lo que nos protege contra los verdugos
voluntarios: el Estatuto y la Constitución, es decir, el Estado de derecho
español” (Perdonen 282).
Thus, Savater proposes a positive Spanish state that can reduce any historical problem—old or new, greater or smaller than the Spanish state itself—to a state problem, so that every Spanish subject can identify equally with the state and enjoy its solution equally. This articulation is one of the two components that explains Savater’s ideological success. Like Unamuno’s Castile, Savater’s Spain is an empty state that can absorb any historical problem, while remaining empty and thus outside of history. At the same time, Savater’s state presents a second component: a melancholic structure. The emptiness of the state stands for a lost object that is retained as loss. The lost object that makes possible this melancholic structure is the enlightened and democratic subject.
Savater’s articulation of state melancholia is a way of counteracting new global influences and of creating a positive continuity within the Spanish state, so that, ultimately, global history is left outside and we can return to a national state. In general, Savater is supportive of new hybridations between different cultures and histories—such as national and global cultures. He embraces hybridation as a historical means of change, resorting to the use of extremely powerful, misogynistic and imperialist metaphors such as the following:
Lo que en cada pueblo es culturalmente peculiar y merece eternizarse no puede retroceder ante el mestizaje, la impregnación y la confrontación con los complejos culturales dominantes de la época. Parafraseando un dicho de Alejandro Dumas sobre la novela histórica, pudiera establecerse que es lícito violar una cultura, pero a condición de hacerle un hijo: pues nada es más estéril que la pureza autóctona y las raíces incontaminadas. (Contra 150, my emphasis)
Yet, when new historical realities, emerging from the process of globalization, interfere with the functioning of the state, Savater takes the opposite stand against this new ongoing hybridation, and denounces the resulting new historical, hybrid realities as irrational, that is, he others them and pushes them outside of history. For example, when discussing the O.J. Simpson trial, Savater presents it as a symptom of the new times. He describes its importance and the political conundrums that it creates:
Aunque quizás en sí mismo no haya sido un acontecimiento tan relevante como el descubrimiento de la penicilina, pongamos por caso, es indudable la importancia sociológica del juicio de O.J. Simpson, pues ha funcionado como un notable catalizador de un síntoma clave de la sociedad en que vivimos o en la que dentro de poco viviremos. Me refiero al síntoma secesionista, al inesperado triunfo en multitud de lugares del ideal del apartheid oficialmente abolido en Sudáfrica….. Lo significativo es que tanto los enojados como los contentos han sentido el agravio o la victoria en relación con su clan de afiliación, nunca como desaprobación o aprobación de la justicia objetiva del fallo. (Contra 171-72, my emphasis)
Thus, the outcome of the O.J. Simpson trial is no longer an issue of justice or lack thereof, but rather, of a new hybrid judicial and political reality in which justice becomes secondary. In these cases, the individual is hybridized with the group and, therefore, the resulting hybrid subject no longer can be separated according to modern political criteria so that justice can be applied. In modern political theory, the foundational political and legal subject is the citizen qua singular individual. This new global hybridization of individuals with collective identities is what Savater calls the symptom of our times.
Furthermore, in another article entitled
“El origen como meta y como mito” (Contra
165-70), he associates the emergence of a hybrid identity politics,
multiculturalism, with the return to the mythical origin of the group and its
identity: “En el terreno religioso y filosófico, pero sobre todo en el campo de
lo político, asistimos a un regreso incontenible de lo originario o, más bien,
a un regreso colectivo hacia lo
originario... De modo que el origen se ofrece como un asidero a partir del cual
se podrá otra vez con firmeza valorar, discriminar y decidir” (Contra 165). Savater includes the
case of Basque nationalism as an example of this new return to origins, and
concludes that the new historical, hybrid reality defined by this return is
brought about by globalization and threatens the state and its institutions
(e.g., democracy and justice). Furthermore, Savater rightly concludes that the
new group identity politics threatens the core of the modern state: the
rational subject articulated by the Enlightenment. As Savater himself acknowledges:
Si el mito del origen se generaliza como meta en la nueva centuria que vamos a estrenar, ¿no tendremos ocasión de echar de menos esa especie amenazada, el ciudadano moderno, desarraigado y desterritorializado al menos en potencia, convencional, voluntarista e innovador, más pendiente de la incertidumbre vidriosa del presente que de la reconstrucción y perpetua conmemoración fabulosa de lo originario? (Contra 170)
Yet he fails to notice the hybrid nature of this return to the origins, that is, multiculturalism. After all, this new hybrid subject, also defined by its group(s), hybridizes origin and present. Rather than embracing this new global hybridation of subjectivity—between individuality and collectivity, as well as between past and present—Savater melancholically invokes the rational, individual subject of Enlightenment: “¿Deberíamos entonces renunciar al sueño ilustrado de una ciudadanía entendida como capacidad de poner la participación racional en la gestión de lo común por encima de nuestras forzosas determinaciones particulares?” (Contra 173). That is, Savater is melancholic about the nationless, universal subject who has no origins and whose rational subjectivity becomes his or her only home, a home that is as rational and abstract as the political institution that guarantees it, that is, the state: “Me parece que la izquierda actual no deplora con suficiente intensidad la presente decadencia del internacionalismo” (Contra 51). Following Cioran, he even identifies the utopia of this nationless subject with a racist characterization of the Jewish diaspora, so that the diasporic Jew is idealized for the purpose of creating a sublime enlightened subject, instead of the historical subject of so many diasporic hardships, above all, of the Holocaust (Contra 153-57). Therefore, Savater articulates a structure of melancholia around the enlightened subject—the object of state desire. Yet because this subject is invoked insistently as a lost subject, it remains in the text and justifies Savater’s discourse as melancholic. Savater refuses to relinquish this subject in favor of new hybrid and global subjectivities, which form multiculturalism and require a more complex understanding of history, difference, and human rigthts.
Yet, we must ask, once again, what is the ideological effect of this melancholia for the Enlightenment articulated by Savater in the process of legitimizing a positive, ahistorical Spanish state? To begin with, melancholia is a form of “false history,” that is, a non-historical history, for melancholia can retrospectively fabricate or articulate a loss that was not original. This is the main accusation made against hegemonic nationalisms; that is, they invent tradition as a lost object (as Jon Juaristi has clearly stated, following Giorgio Agamben, rather than Freud, with reference to the Basque case). The invention of a lost tradition legitimizes those nationalisms as the rightful melancholic subject of such loss, so that this melancholic subject retroactively becomes real as loss. In short, melancholia can serve as a way of simulating history (although in subaltern subjects such as the queer, melancholia can have a productive and contestatory value, as Butler argues [235]).
If we look at Spanish history, it is quite clear that the enlightened subject is not part of its “true historical past.” The Enlightenment never had much of a following in Spain except as despotism (Subirats, Ilustración insuficiente). The only foci of enlightenment in Spain were northern enclaves such as the Basque one created by the Caballeritos de Azkoitia. Yet, why would Savater invent an enlightened tradition in order to uphold the Spanish state, that is, a state that has not been, historically speaking, on the side of the Enlightenment? Precisely because, by inventing an enlightened past as loss, Savater can bypass “real Spanish history” and, instead, replace it with a new “invented Spanish history.” Savater’s invented history is rational, enlightened, unchangeable and, ultimately, empty of history. That is, the Enlightenment is the empty history that claims to be universal, timeless, and utopian, so that it can become the timeless ahistorical past of any state, including the Spanish one. In short, Savater resorts to inventing a Spanish melancholic past that is ahistorical and timeless. At one point he dismisses the dark side of the Enlightenment (colonialism, slavery) so that then he can claim the timelessness of the Enlightenment as such:
En cuanto a la práctica política de los ilustrados, ya se ha dicho cuanto convenía y hasta lo inconveniente sobre los barcos negreros que enriquecieron a Voltaire, el imperialismo decimonónico, etcétera. Pero la teoría, en cambio, no está mal pensada. Porque los ilustrados también querían volver a las raíces humanas y precisamente supusieron que eran tales raíces lo que todas las personas comparten, sean cuales fueren las diferencias de sus lenguas, sus culturas o sus creencias. (Perdonen 60-61)
That is, the “raíces” or “roots” of the Enlightenment are the only roots that are not historical (never mind slavery) and are, thus, not bound to “the postmodern return to origins” that Savater denounces (Contra 165-70). The Enlightenment’s origins are the only “non-originary origins;” any other group’s origins, however, are “originary.” In this way, faced with the new hybrid multicultural realities that defy the state, Savater invents, through melancholia, a new Spanish history: the timeless history of an enlightened Spanish state. Finally, all Spaniards become retroactively and melancholically enlightened subjects who can weather the new global history and all its irrational and anti-state hybrid political realities from the standpoint of the Enlightenment’s unchangeable past. Thus the positive but empty state delineated by Savater finds in the Enlightenment its full and positive history, precisely as non-history. Since all Spanish subjects are now equally historical in the eyes of the enlightened Spanish state, they all share the same invented history and can enjoy it equally as a loss. This is the strength and ideological appeal of Savater’s political and historical proposal, which is a neoliberal and neonationalist ideology.
Ironically enough, Savater finally comes full circle and becomes a new kind of nationalist: not an old-fashioned Spanish nationalist, but rather, a neonationalist of the enlightened Spanish state and its timeless, yet invented, postmodern origins. That is, Savater proposes a new kind of empty postmodern nationalism, the only nationalism that presents a correct return to (universal) origins: neonationalism. As a result, Savater others globalization as well as the new hybrid subjectivities and their histories. He others multiculturalism.
If Savater’s thought derives from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, that is, in the aftermath of metaphysical idealism, but traces its steps back to the Enlightenment, his defense of the state seems post-Kantian, almost Hegelian. Although Savater discusses Hegel, the latter’s philosophy is never a recurrent discourse in Savater’s reflection. Yet, Hegel’s post-Enlightenment thought seems central to understanding Savater’s own postmodern take on the Enlightenment.
In his famous Introduction to his Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Hegel explained world history as the process by which the universal spirit realizes itself: “[T]he aim of world history, therefore, is that the spirit should attain knowledge of its own true nature, that it should objectivise this knowledge and transform it into a real world, and give itself an objective existence” (64). In this process, Hegel concluded that the formation of the nation-state in Europe represented the Spirit’s historical and geopolitical self-realization through its migration from Asia and Africa toward Europe (54, 130-31). Thus, Hegel claimed the national state to be the ultimate representation of the universal Spirit: “The spirit in history is an individual which is both universal in nature and at the same time determinate: in short, it is the nation in general, and the spirit we are concerned with is the spirit of the nation” (51). (Hegel uses the term “nation” to refer to the “nation-state”; thus, it can be read as “state” as well.) As many critics have noticed, the Americas had in Hegel a utopian location that was excluded and repressed from his political and historical teleology (109, 163-71). As he clearly stated: “It is up to America to abandon the ground on which world history has hitherto been enacted…as a country of the future, it is of no interest to us here, for prophecy is not the business of the philosopher” (170-71). Therefore, Hegel’s world history did not contemplate globalization as such.
Against more utilitarian understandings of the state (Hobbes, Locke), Hegel and Savater uphold the European state as the ultimate realization of the Enlightened individual qua representative of the universal Spirit of reason. Savater would concur with Hegel’s statement that: “a state will be well constituted and internally powerful if the private interest of its citizens coincides with the general end of the state, so that the one can be satisfied and realized through the other” (73). Because of this perfect dialectical fit between the state and the individual, Savater would also agree with Hegel that: “A nation consists on the one hand of distinct moments which combine to give it its general character; on the other, it also embodies the opposite principle of individuality, and these two principles together constitute the reality of the Idea. In a nation or state, everything depends on the nature of these two elements, on the way in which they differ, and the way in which they unite” (76). That is, Savater’s defense of the state against internal nationalist upheaval or global political hybridization responds to Hegel’s historical ideal of democracy within the state.
Yet, because of the way in which Hegel formulates his philosophy of history, he allows for a dialectical elaboration of globalization as a stage of world history that incorporates the nation-state, which is more historically accurate than Fukuyama’s popular rendition of the former’s philosophy. As Hegel states:
Each new individual national spirit represents a new state in the conquering march of the world spirit as it wins its way to consciousness and freedom. The death of a national spirit is a transition to new life, but not as in nature, where the death of one individual gives life to another individual of the same kind. On the contrary, the world spirit progresses from lower determinations to higher principles and concepts of its own nature, to more fully developed expressions of its Idea. (63)
At this point, Hegel might admit that the nation-state is a “lower determination” of the “higher principle” of globalization, although globalization might not be the full realization of the universal Spirit either. In Hegel, the Spirit determines itself through self-identification and negation and, thus, progresses dialectically. Furthermore, Hegel emphasizes the competition between states and hints at their transience when he concludes:
The individual national spirit is subject to transcience. It perishes, loses its world-historical significance, and ceases to be the bearer of the highest concept the spirit has formed of itself. For the nation whose concept of the spirit is highest is in tune with the times and rules over the others. It may well be that nations whose concepts are less advanced survive, but they only exist on the periphery of world history. (60)
Thus Hegel is able to situate the state in a historical perspective and, consequently, can also conclude: “each individual subject must be free and independent in its own right. From this point of view, the individual members of a nation can be seen as analogous to the nations themselves in their independent development throughout the history of the world” (77). In short, Hegel’s understanding of history makes him, unlike Savater, aware of the possibility of transcending the state as the ultimate political reality.
Savater has acknowledged the historical reality of globalization, but he still contemplates it as a fundamentally technological phenomenon that does not alter his nostalgic understanding of the enlightened state: “Lo que siempre he mantenido es que la globalización es, en cierta medida, inevitable, porque proviene de la mundialización de las comunicaciones, tanto en el sentido de los instrumentos de comunicación masiva como en el de la capacidad física de las personas de trasladarse en pocas horas a cualquier lugar de la Tierra” (Alfieri 193). In the same interview, he continues to uphold the state as the ultimate guarantor against globalization (194-95).
Spanish intellectuals such as Savater seem to reverse Hegelian dialectics and to negate globalization nostalgically by clinging to the nineteenth-century Hegelian notion of the European nation-state as representation of the universal Spirit. Savater represents a very anti-Hegelian melancholia for a nineteenth-century Hegelian history of the state, as if he were a new Spanish Alexandre Kojève of a sort. Savater negates the new hybrid political realities emerging from within the fragmentation of the nation-state—such as Spanish peripheral nationalism or feminism—and from without—such as global capital and migration, which are also gendered. Consequently, he upholds the Spanish state as the only political reality of our days, so that peripheral political upheaval in the state, women’s movements, global technology or Third-World immigration all remain state problems. I have made reference to Hegel deliberately in order to show that the post-Hegelian school that Schopenhauer and Nietzsche have inaugurated is missing completely from Savater’s contemporary thinking on the state. Savater is closer to Hegel than to Nietzsche and, therefore, to the conservative Fukuyama and Huntington. At this point, we need a new Nietzschean analysis of globalization, state crisis, and postnationalist upheaval. In this sense, Savater’s lack of interest in postnational theory points to his decidedly anachronistic approach to the problem of the state.
Rather than clinging to postmodern forms of melancholia for invented tradition—such as the enlightened Spanish state—which are no longer in sync with the new historical realities brought about by globalization, Spanish intellectuals must engage in a new theorization of Spanish history, so that Spain is neither affirmed or negated, but rather historically located—objectivized, in the Hegelian parlance—in its new, hybrid realities, such as those of Basques or immigrants. (Even women are hybrid in this context, since their demands and gains exceed the framework of the nation-state). The fear of questioning the state keeps Spanish intellectuals, such as Savater, from relocating it within a larger hybrid reality. The reason for this fear is that, once questioned, the state loses its ultimate legitimacy, and other political subjects enjoy more than the state. Only when these fears are overcome, and we begin to rethink our historical particularities and political enjoyments, only then, will we be able to rethink “Spanish / Basque / women’s / immigrant history” as universal and to be able to contribute to the ongoing global debate on identity politics. Until that moment, and as long as Spanish intellectuals adhere to the sterile, postmodern, melancholic theorization of the enlightened state, Savater’s complaint that the rest of the world does not pay attention to Spanish intellectual production and thus relegates it to marginality (Contra 57), will remain a well deserved fate.