For most of this week, we have been exploring the relationship between art and politics, a topic with which I have been deeply involved, both personally and professionally. We started with a discussion of political censorship. We debated the distinction between art and propaganda. And we explored how aesthetic interpretation supports hope. The power and limits of art were debated. Memory, unexpectedly, at least for me, was central in the discussion. I turned to the reflections of a novelist, Milan Kundera, on the obligation of the artist in my post exploring the special quality of art as opposed to propaganda. And now I turn to Kundera again in confronting memory, a problem that also appeared in Benoit Challand’s post on a discussion between his New York students and colleagues in Gaza City.

Kundera opens his novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting with a depiction of an impressive event. He tells the story of the Communist leader, Klement Gottwald, giving a speech in February, 1948, to an audience of hundreds of thousands. It was cold and the snow was falling heavily. Next to Gottwald was Clementis. Gottwald was without a hat. “Bursting with solicitude, Clementis took off his fur hat and set it on Gottwald’s head.” The propaganda department took a photo of the historic event, of the Party leader addressing the masses, marking the beginning of “Communist Bohemia.” “Every child knew the photograph, from seeing it on posters, and in schoolbooks and museums.” Four years later, Clementis was charged with treason and hanged. The propaganda section purged him from all history. He was airbrushed out of the photo. “Ever since, Gottwald has been alone on the balcony. Where Clementis stood, there is only a balcony. Where Clementis stood, there is only the bare palace wall. Nothing remains of Clementis but the hat on Gottwald’s head.”

In presenting this event, Kundera sets the theme of his book: systematic forgetting, amusingly depicted. Note that in Kundera’s story what is remembered is determined by the needs of the present. This is the position of Maurice Halbwachs, the sociologist who presented the classical sociological position on collective memory. But the past resists manipulation in surprising ways, something that particularly interested the great critical theorist, Walter Benjamin. Yet, in Kundera’s account, these are not just two general tendencies. Under totalitarian conditions “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

This struggle is at work in the case of Judy Taylor’s labor mural, as we were able to consider it in the post by Vince Carducci, which was supplemented by photos of the work provided by the artist. Governor Paul LePage wielding his official powers, extending the unofficial power of the tea party, removed a memorial mural commissioned to remember highlights in Maine labor history. This is enforced forgetting, at one with the anti-union policies around the country today. Not only are specific labor unions under attack, there is an attempt to erase the memory of union struggles.

Yet, this controversy, from a sociological point of view, is complicated by the fact that every act of collective remembering involves forgetting as well. We pay attention to the moments in labor history that Taylor, with the assistance of a labor historian, chooses to depict, but we forget others that could have been portrayed. Michael Corey with local knowledge reminds us of this. There is a point of view in the work. It emphasizes labor management struggles and not cooperation. Other events point to a different story. The mural is a work that remembers and forgets. But, I wouldn’t call this propaganda, as Vince Carducci does, although I understand why he chooses to do so. The work illuminates from a position.

I am, though, more concerned with the special kind of forgetting and distortion as imagined by Kundera, suggesting that there aren’t just two political positions, each with its propaganda. LePage’s actions could have appeared in Kundera’s novel. It involves not just the human condition, as we remember some things, we forget others. But a more tyrannical condition, where forgetting is a force against memory, connected to a political project.

Art, unlike propaganda, is subtle and how it remembers and makes it possible for us to see things has more to do with metaphor and illumination than with facts. Thus, the story that Kundera tells in his novel, the fate of Clementis’s hat, is a work of imagination, though it is true as such.

Bridges are not novels. But when they are built in ways that don’t just get us from here to there (I think of bridges such as the Kosciusko Bridge in New York), they also tell stories, or at least they inspire us to tell stories. In a modest way, a few weeks ago in the wake of the Japanese catastrophes, two bridges on the old Rockefeller estate told stories to me, which I conveyed to you. More profoundly, Ivo Andric’s The Bridge on the Drina, told a story of hope which Elzbieta Matynia considered in her post this week. Althue Serre mistook artistic expression and imagination for a factual report, and in the process, dismissed the theoretical insight that art provides. He misses the vital link between memory and imagination.

How we remember as much as what we remember matters, in works of art and in everyday interactions.  When we talk to each other across political and cultural divides, we see things that we otherwise wouldn’t see. Benoit Challand’s class learned more profoundly about the political struggles in North Africa and the Middle East, by speaking to a group of Palestinians in Gaza. They heard first hand reports of a demonstration and its repression by those who were involved, or at least by those who were much more closely connected to the movement. In their conversation, the New Yorkers saw things that have been invisible to consumers of the mass media, including our great hometown paper (I say this with no irony intended), The New York Times. Those who took part in the discussion will not forget what those who observe Palestine through the media cannot even know.

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” But it’s complicated.

For some time already, I have been thinking about the stimulating image of a world of civility that I found in a novel written in the middle of the twentieth century by the Yugoslav writer Ivo Andric entitled The Bridge on the Drina. The bridge as envisioned by a 14^th-century builder is not just a river overpass between Bosnia and Serbia, as it suddenly doubles in width in  the middle to allow for something more than just a crossing of the river on foot or on horse. It is not so much the bridge itself that interests me but this additional physical space in the middle of it, this square on the bridge called the kapia. The bridge’s social, cultural and political power lies in this neutral extra space, with its terraces and “sofas” on either side that can accommodate conversations and get-togethers — or the savoring of Turkish coffee served from a brass coffeemaker — by those who over the centuries used the bridge most: Muslim Bosnians and Turks, Orthodox Christian Serbs, and later on also Catholic Croats and Jews.

The kapia, this square on the bridge, was a place where those who would otherwise not meet could look at each other, sit together, and get to know each other. Not a market place, not a temple, not a court, not a school, the kapia was a place that people did not have to stop at, or come to, but they did. With its “sofas” on both sides, a stand with a brass coffeemaker, and a constant flow of people speaking different languages and worshiping different gods, the kapia was a space that people made really good use of. This neutral site, in the middle of the bridge, made it possible for people to get to feel at home with each other, to look through each other’s lenses, and to plant the seeds of trust. If we could lift the image of the kapia from the novel and look at it as our new modern agora, this richly textured space, inhabited by diverse voices and faces—what would be, if any, its new features and principles?

The very imagery of a bridge and the effort to “bridge” is frequently used in discussions on social capital, networking, and the need to bring people together in an increasingly divided world. But it is really kapia that makes a difference.  Kapia, a place on a bridge, is a threshold, a turning point, a place of challenge and transformation. Kapia is about horizons, not borders, and in times of crisis it opens new prospects, new openings to the future. Kapia is a lookout, and I do not mean an outpost or a guard, but a place from which one can see much farther. Such lookouts used to be the harbor cities of Gdansk, Odessa, Lubeck, or Cape Town, full of different flavors and voices. This is where foreign sailors came, with their different languages, foods, costumes, and customs. A kapia, then, though a manmade construction, may indeed be called a “natural” site for dialogue. The kapia is not a ready-made possibility but rather something people have to work on, to envision, and then to build. The kapia is a “space of appearances” that makes performativity possible. New York is such a kapia.

This week Hannah Arendt’s notion of “past and future” has been revealed at DC. We have addressed a variety of different issues, trying to orient our future action, by thinking about our experiences.  We have looked at the headlines, but also looked elsewhere and thought about different experiences to support the imagination.

I was particularly happy to receive Sergio Tavolaro’s post on President Obama’s visit to Brazil. Following cable news logic, it was a big mistake for the President to go to Brazil, given the pressing problems at home, centered on the impending budget crisis and the great debate about jobs and the deficit, and the military engagement in Libya and the growing uncertainties in North Africa and the Middle East. Yet beyond news sensation, there are important ongoing developments in the Americas, with very significant changes and challenges. Paying attention to Latin America, not only connected to drug and immigration issues, is a necessity especially when there are problems elsewhere.

Brazil is an emerging global power. Brazil and the United States have a long, sad history, marked by domination and political repression. As Brazil has emerged politically and economically, it often has defined its independence against the United States. Obama’s trip worked to change this. The highlight: the historic appreciation of the first African American President of the United States meeting the first woman President of Brazil. Tavolaro reports that there is a fascination with a shared progressive heritage, working against racism and sexism. And he notes that Obama embodied the declaration of equal partnership between nations: the President of the United States visited Brazil before he had an audience with the Brazilian leader in Washington, reversing the usual order. Using a sad past, the Brazilian population could and did imagine a hopeful future with the great American superpower to the north. This is important news for them and for us.

Karl Marx famously said “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” Gary Alan Fine shows how sometimes it works the other way around. First the popular entertainment show, “Candid Camera,” and now the grave dangers of the politics of surveillance.

I believe there is a need to distinguish between the public and the private. I think that targeted revelations about hidden injustice is necessary, but generalized invasions of that which is private will have a long time effect of diminishing democratic capacity, as Daniel Dayan, Elzbieta Matynia and I have noted here, as we each reflected on the WikiLeaks controversies. The new form of simulated revelations is even more pernicious. It has been associated with the left, directed at Governor Scott, but especially by the right, directed at wonderful organizations such as ACORN, Planned Parenthood and NPR. I always find Fine provocative, but I often disagree with him. On this issue, in his linking between a happy past with a frightening future, I am in complete agreement.

Esther Kreider-Verhalle reminds us of the long term effects of Chernobyl as we are observing the horrors of natural disasters in Japan and the failing reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. It is a cautionary note, about future dangers, especially meaningful to me as I live less than twenty miles downstream from the Indian Point Energy Center.

And when I wrote about enhancing nature and mission creep, I also was positioning myself between past and future, trying to inspire thoughtfulness about not only the perils, but also the promise of our times. I often find strength, facing public and private challenges and difficulties, at my favorite retreat, the Rockefeller State Park. I thought about its special qualities to get me out of my latest funk, trying to absorb and think about the painful news from Japan. Bridges old and new helped me think this through, helped me link past and future, reminding me that the human hand can create useful, beautiful and meaningful things. I am looking forward to more reflections on bridges as they enable us to make creative links. Elzbieta Matynia has written incisively about this in her book Performative Democracy. I hope she will adding a post on this here in the near future.

And on my hopes for mission creep, I must confess some deep concerns. I see real creativity and promise in the Middle East and North Africa. But as that promise is being met by violent suppression and as it is defended by violent resistance, I fear the promise is retreating. I will consider this further in my next post, but in the meanwhile, some thoughts related to Michael Corey’s reply to my post. I don’t have a highly elaborated justification of American actions. I am appalled as he is by the administration’s use of the term “kinetic military action,” although I understand why they don’t simply use the word “war.” This is an intervention, very quickly enacted with multinational support, to stop an impending massacre of innocents. As the international support for the action was elegant, the domestic enactment has been clumsy. Using newspeak to cover this clumsiness is not a good idea. Obama’s speech to the nation on Monday is the way to go. I look forward to it and will deliberately review it here on Tuesday. But in the meanwhile, please take a look at a series of posts by Juan Cole. He presents the facts on the ground which explains why action was urgent, how it has been successful and why the mission creep I hope for has a chance.

The DC discussion last week about the catastrophes in Japan, as well as about the photography of John Ganis depicting the degradation of the environment by human activity, suggests to me an important aesthetic issue, not immediately tied to the moral and political problems of the day, but illuminating them. We must remember in this time of crisis that the taming of the natural world doesn’t only degrade but also enhances our environment and its beauty.

I often think about this running around my neighborhood. I have two basic running routes, one involves just going out my front door, down a long winding road in the direction of Washington Irving’s House, Sunnyside, continuing my run on the Old Croton Aqueduct, a very beautiful and exhilarating experience. Even more spectacular is an alternative run requiring a short car ride to the compound of the Rockefeller family. The Rockefellers still live in its many mansions and fine homes, but a significant portion of their estate has become a beautiful state park, with 40 miles of bridal paths, now making for a runner’s paradise.

Bill Clinton sometimes runs at Rockefeller, as does Khalid Khannouchi, a former world record holder in the marathon and many lesser runners from the area and way beyond. Running there is like running through a Jane Austen novel. This is no accident. The paths and bridges were designed by John D. Rockefeller Jr. for John D. Rockefeller Sr. The hills and valleys and the streams are like those in the woods closer to my house. But I make a point to go to the park, as Junior’s gift for his great robber baron father demonstrates the beauty of human intervention and imagination. This is clear at all times, in good weather and in bad.

A few years ago, a hurricane brushed our area, washing away one of the bridges. Many of these (designed John D. Jr. himself) are made of cobbled stone. They are as graceful as the river banks, and become part of the landscape with their colors and textures. On a nice day after the storm, I came across the replacement of the destroyed bridge. It wasn’t made of stone. It didn’t try to simulate the old technologies, but was modern, made of steel, already showing the rich warm rust colors of fall leaves, with a bit of wood looking as if it could have come from one of the surrounding trees. I slowed down to admire it, noticing a man looking at it. “Nice bridge,” I said, and he, to my surprise, replied, “Thank you.” I never got his name. I ran off before thinking that it would have been nice to know, but I surmised he was the architect, someone who had enhanced this story book setting with as much appreciation and artistry as that of John D. Rockefeller Jr., who helped lay out the estate for his father, and also for me.

I was reminded of this incident last week during one of my runs as the horror in Japan was unfolding. While this has been a week of grave natural disasters in Japan, the week in the New York metropolitan area was on the slightly rough side, especially north of the city up the Hudson River. We had heavy rain, flooding many major roads. Getting from here to there was a bother. When I made it to my favorite running path at Rockefeller, a babbling brook had become an overflowing river with raging rapids. The path crisscrosses streams of the park, and a section is named “Thirteen Bridges.” Last weekend, some of the bridges just barely covered the streams. And the old bridges, along with the new one, allowed the runners, hikers, individuals and families out for a walk, with and without their dogs, and a rider on horseback, to pass over, to be a part of an enhanced nature. Modern and traditional technologies were part of the solution, not the problem.

Discerning when we compromise our natural environment, and when we support and enhance the natural world, is the political challenge, for example, when we decide the great energy debate of fossil fuel versus nuclear technology, and as we seek the alternatives of the sun, the waters and the winds.