Читать книгу Changing European Visions of Disaster and Development - Vanessa Pupavac - Страница 10

Here there shall be an inland paradise:

Outside, the sea, as high as it can reach,

May rage and gnaw; and yet a common will,

Should it intrude, will act to close the breach.

So proclaimed Faust in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s epic poem (Goethe 1832 Act V ‘The Great Forecourt of the Palace’ in Luke 1998: 223). The blind and dying Faust was in a hurry to complete his vision. Mephisto was hovering over Faust’s frail body, ready to snatch his soul. Faust had contracted a demonic pact to enjoy worldly powers, and the devil wanted to claim his due. Could Faust escape hell? Faust died overseeing a grand project to build coastal flood barriers, drain the marshes, and reclaim land from the waves. Faust’s redemptive act for humanity is a vision of a free society, enjoying liberty and security, cooperating with each other to maintain the sea defences and cultivate the fertile land.

Our book returns to Goethe’s Faust as a focal point to review European humanist visions of ‘a free people on free land’, anchored by modern development and eradication of disasters (Goethe 1832 Act V ‘The Great Forecourt of the Palace’ in Luke 1998: 223). In our return, we follow the precedent of Goethe and His Age (1968 [1947]) by the Hungarian Marxist philosopher Georg Lukacs (1885–1971), whose study was written against the background of European totalitarianism and the shadow of war. He returned to Goethe’s work as ‘a taking-stock of the historical heritage’ and ‘a necessary start toward something new’ against the modern crises and the looming war years (1968 [1947]: 161). Goethe’s Faust itself takes stock of Europe’s historical heritage during turbulent times (Piper 2010: 65–68). The Russian poet Alexander Pushkin described Faust as ‘an Iliad of modern life’ (Pushkin in Lukacs 1968 [1947]: 157). Faust’s odyssey spanning antiquity to modernity explored human strivings to find meaning and create a home in the world. Literature helps us interrogate our lives and times and make sense of what matters. We may narrate the confusions of the present, recall the confusions of the past, and, through our capacity to forge meaningful narratives, imagine a renewed future. Our study focuses on Faust the Developer and takes up a key theme pursued by the American philosopher and Marxist humanist Marshall Berman (1940–2013). His All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1988 [1982]) analysed Faust the Developer to explore the yearnings and contradictions of modernity more broadly. In taking these precedents, we share Berman’s definition of humanist modernism as ‘any attempt by modern men and women to become subjects as well as objects of modernization, to get a grip on the modern world and make themselves at home in it’ (ibid.: 5).

The German writer Goethe (1749–1832) has been described as the last Renaissance man of modernity, spanning reason and passion, science and poetry, government and scholarship, the planetary and the microscopic, and the epic and the lyrical; bridging the past and the future; and defining the scope of his age (Boyle 1991, 2000; Lewes 1908 [1864]; Lukacs 1968 [1947]; Piper 2010). Goethe’s work has offered European culture a vital blood transfusion more than once, whether Europe after the revolutionary and Napoleonic upheavals or the war-ravaged world confronting Lukacs. Goethe’s British translator and champion, the historian Thomas Carlyle saw an artist and a polymath surveying his age and offering his contemporaries guiding purpose. In Carlyle’s words, Goethe was ‘the Uniter, and victorious Reconciler, of the distracted, clashing element of the most distracted and divided age’ (Carlyle 1893 [1832]: 237–8). Goethe’s ‘incommensurable’ narrative explored the contradictions of the European Faustian spirit (Eckermann 1930 [3 January 1830]: 341). His Faust addressed the meaning of Europe and Europe’s humanist heritage in an era of political revolutions, counter-revolutions, and wars of national independence. The narrative poem swept across European history, putting the medieval Christian and ancient classical traditions into dialogue with the new scientific age. In Faust’s conjuring words, ‘Speech to and fro entices, calls it forth’ (Goethe Faust II 1832 Act III ‘The Inner Courtyard’ in Constantine 2009: 163). Goethe’s universal aspirations were a compelling reference point to rekindle a humanist European culture from the ashes of total war. He remains a compelling reference point to explore European humanism today.

We too are at a critical juncture for Europe, a Europe estranged from its humanist tradition and modernity, where the disasters of humanity overshadow possibilities of eradicating more of the disasters of nature. The foundations of the European Community in the 1950s lie in a coal and steel community based on industrial economic cooperation between states over key industries facilitating political cooperation. The post-war functionalist theories of European integration were materialist and linked to state industrial strategies seeing their legitimacy as lying in providing comprehensive material security through supporting industries, full employment, housing, and welfare, and overcoming the shortcomings of the pre-war economy (Haas 2004 [1968]). Conversely the foundations of the European Union (EU) in the 1990s were in non-industrial strategies of monetary union facilitating ‘ever closer union’ (Stiglitz 2016). The post–Cold War constructivist theories of European integration were idealist and linked to post-industrial cosmopolitan social ideals, centring their legitimacy on economic freedom of movement and human rights (Christiansen et al., 2001; Habermas 2001, 2012). Into the new millennium, European governance is fusing neoliberal and ecological thinking on risk and complexity (Hayek 1974, 1988; Beck 2016).

Changing European disaster and development visions are reflected in attitudes towards Faust the Developer. Goethe’s Faust imagined the cultural fusion of southern and northern Europe, reconciling the Renaissance rediscovery of ancient classical ideas and the Reformation religious differences over faith and works. Collective endeavour allowed people to transform their conditions and carve out more space for human freedom and self-determination. Faust’s vast industrial project hoped his development would provide secure land for people to live on and prosper, free from disaster and want. National independence movements involved projects of national development. Some even invoked Faust and Faust’s child as inspirations.

Our book traces the rise and fall of European Faustian development from Dutch hydro-engineering and British industrialisation in northern Europe to Yugoslavia and Croatia in southern Europe and their Non-Aligned Movement ties. Leading European institutions and cultural ideas today reject Faust and Faustian development visions. Faust’s name is almost invariably invoked to indict human development as disastrous and rein in individual freedom and collective self-determination. The non-Faustian political-economic pact underpinning EU institutions is straining southern and northern, eastern and western relations in Europe. While some cities and areas may be prospering, swathes of Europe witness decaying national industries and infrastructure and the lack of industrial renewal strategies. Many citizens from southern and eastern Europe have little option but to become cheap migratory labour for the centres of economic activity in northern Europe. Economic contraction and depopulation are hollowing out the life of these countries. This pattern is even starker in what the EU designates its European neighbourhood, namely the former Non-Aligned Movement countries of the Middle East and North Africa, which came under foreign military intervention. Effectively people are losing their modern home in the world carved out by previous generations, and finding themselves more exposed again to external economic and natural forces.