Terror as Usual: Walter Benjamin's Theory of History as a State of Siege Author(s): Mick Taussig Source: Social Text, No.

23 (Autumn - Winter, 1989), pp. 3-20 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/466418 . Accessed: 24/08/2011 04:17
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TerrorAs Usual: WalterBenjamin'sTheoryof History As A State Of Siege

MICKTAUSSIG

Terror as The Other A questionof distance- that's what I'd like to say about talkingterror,a matter of finding the right distance, holding it at arm's length so it doesn't turnon you (afterall it's just a matterof words), and yet not puttingit so far away in a clinical reality that we end up having substitutedone form of terrorfor another.But having said this I can see myself already lost, lost out to terroryou might say, embarkedon some futile exercise in Liberal Aesthetics strugglingto establish a golden mean and utterlyunable to absorb the fact that terror'stalk always talks back - super-octaned dialogism in radicaloverdrive,its talk presupposingif not meaningwhile dependenton it, stringing anticipatingmy response, undermining out the nervous system one way towardhysteria,the other way towardnumbing and apparentacceptance, both ways flip-sides of terror,the political Art of the as Arbitrary, usual. Of course that's elsewhere, always elsewhere, you'll want to say, not the rule but the exception, existing in An-OtherPlace like NorthernIreland,Beirut,Ethiopia, Kingston, Port au Prince, Peru, Mozambique,Afghanistan, Santiago, the Bronx, the West Bank, South Africa, San Salvador,Colombia, to name but some of the more publicized from the staggeringnumberof spots troublingthe course of the world's order. But perhapssuch an elsewhere should make us suspicious about the deeply rooted sense of orderhere, as if their darkwildness exists so as to silhouetteour light, the bottom line being, of course, the tight and necessaryfit between order, law, justice, sense, economy, and history- all of which them elsewhere manifestly ain't got much of. Pushed by this suspicion I am first reminded of anothersort of History of anothersort of Other Within, a history of small-fry ratherthan of the Wealth of Nations, as for example in a letter in the Village Voice in 1984 from an ex-social workerin the state of Colorado, in the USA, commentingon an article on JeanneAnne Wrightwho killed her own children. The social workernotes that it was axiomatic that the "deeperyou dig, the dirtier it gets; the web of connections, the tangled family histories of failure, When abuse, and neglect spreadout in awesomely unmanageableproportions." the social workerasked a young mother about the bum markson her nine-year old daughter,she replied in a passive futile voice that her husbandused a cattle 3

Terror Usual as

prod on the girl when she was bad. Then she smiled, "as if it was the oddest thing,"saying "it hurtstoo. I know 'cos he uses it on me sometimes."They lived in "anonymousand transitory" a refurbishedchicken coop on a canal-linedroad. One afternoon this social worker was taking the last of anotherwoman's four childrenfrom her home when the woman leapt up and pulled down her pants to show him where her ex-husbandhad stabbed her in the buttocks. "Justas suddenly," he writes, the woman "realizedwhat she had done and began to cry and to laugh, somehow at the same time, and somehow to mean both."And he concludes by saying "I am left with the impression of lives as massive, dense, and impenetrableas those nodes of collapsed matterout of which nothing escapes and whose only measureis what they absorband conceal." But what about the historiesof the Big Fry, the Historiesof Success? Are they so removed from this violent world whose only measureis what it absorbsand conceals? In talkingterror'stalk are we ourselves not temptedto absorband conceal the violence in our own immediatelife-worlds, in our universities,workplaces, streets,shopping malls, and even families, where, like business, it's terroras usual? In particular,as we zig-zag between wanting to conceal and wanting to reveal, might we not suddenlybecome conscious of our own conventions of coordinatingpower and sense-makingand realize, as WalterBenjaminput it in his last writingswrittenon the eve of WorldWar II, that: of in of teachesus thatthe "state emergency" The tradition the oppressed to but whichwe live is not theexception therule.We mustattain a concepThenwe shallclearly recthat tionof history is in keepingwiththisinsight. and ognizethatit is ourtaskto bringabouta realstateof emergency, this Onereasonwhy Fascism. our will improve positionin the struggle against its treat has Fascism a chanceis thatin thenameof progress opponents it as amazement the thingswe areexperiencthat a historical norm.The current is This century not philosophical. ing are "still"possiblein the twentieth of is amazement not thebeginning knowledge unlessit is theknowledge on thatthe view of historywhichgives rise to it is untenable ("Theses the of Philosophy History"). In other words what does it take to understandour reality as a chronic state of emergency, as a Nervous System? Note the concept;please take care to note the issue before us. Not a knee-jerk application of postmoder anti-totalitarianism bent on disruptingan assumedcomplicity between terrorand narrative order,but an opportunisticpositionless position which recognizes that the terrorin such disruptionis no less thanthatof the orderit is bent on eliminating. Terror is what keeps these extremes in apposition, just as that apposition maintainsthe irregularrhythmof numbingand shock that constitutesthe apparent normality of the abnormalcreated by the state of emergency. Between the of orderof that state and the arbitrariness its emergency, what then of the center -and what of its talk? Talking Terror 1 I had been invited by one of our more augustinstitutionsof the higherlearningto talk on the terrorassociated with the Peruvian Amazon Company in the early twentieth century rubberboom in the Putumayo area of Colombia. Before the

MickTaussig

scholar, older than myself. With remarkableverve and flair for detail he compareddifferenthistoricalepochs for theiramountof terror,concluding,over dessert, thatour centurywas the worst. There was somethingweighty, even sinister, about this. We were drawinga balance sheet not just on history but on its harvest of terror,our intellect bending under the weight of fearful facts, and our epoch had come in first. We felt strangelyprivileged, in so far as we could equate our epoch with ourselves, which is, I suppose, what historicaljudgementturnsupon. And in drawingour grim conclusion, were we not deliberatelymaking ourselves afraid,in ever so sly a way enjoying our fear?But I myself find I am now a little frightenedeven suggesting this possibility. It seems plausible, yet over-sophisticated, mocking both fear and intelligence. Tennis balls thwacked.The shadows thrownby the Gothic spires lengthened as the afternoondrew on. One could not but feel a little uneasy about the confidence with which terrorwas being mastered over linen napkins, a confidence shielding the unspoken fear the universitycommunity had of the ghetto it had a disappearedseveral years back - "disappeared," strange new word-usagein as well as in Spanish,as in El Salvadoror Colombia when someone just English death squads. The univervanishes off the face of the map due to para-military in the USA is of course remote from thatsort of thing. Death squads,I mean. sity But it is well known that some twenty-five years back this particularuniversity, for instance, had appliedrelentless financialpressureon the surrounding ghettodwellers and that during that time there were many strangefires burningbuildings down and black people out. There was hate. There was violence. Nobody forgot the dead white professorfound strungup on the school fence. The university came to own the thirdlargestpolice force in the state. Togetherwith the city it administration changedthe trafficpattern,impedingentry to the areaby means what it could of of a labyrinthof one-way streets. An invisible handmanipulated public cultureand public space. It became unlawful to post certainsorts of flyers on universitynotice boards, thus preventingcertain sorts of people from having any good reason for being in the vicinity. Thus, in time, while preserving the semblanceof democraticopenness, the universitycame to reconstructthe ghetto into a middle class, largely white, fortress within an invisible cordon sanitaire. Terroras usual, the middle class way, justified by the appeal to the highereducation, to the preservationof Civilization itself, played out right there in the fearridden blocks of lofty spires, the fiery figures of the burningbuildings, and the calm spotlights of policemen with their watchful dogs. We remember Walter Benjamin:"no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism." My thoughts drifted to a late nineteenth-centurystory written by Joseph Conrad's close friend, the larger than life eccentric Robert Bontine CunninghameGraham.In this story, "A Hegira,"CunninghameGrahamrelates how on a tripto Mexico City in 1880 he visited eight Apache Indiansimprisoned in a cage and on public view in the castle of Chapultepec.As he left the city to returnto his ranch in Texas, he heard they had escaped, and all the long way northhe witnessed elation and pandemoniumas in town after town drunkenmen galloped off, gun in hand, to trackdown and kill, one by one, these foot-weary

Terror Usual as

Indians- half-human,half beast, decidedly and mysteriously Other- slowly moving north throughthe terrainof Mexico, constitutingit as a nation and as a people in the terrorof the savageryimputedto the Apache. Yet when I'd finished telling the tale my host looked at me. "Do you know how many people the Apaches killed and how many head of cattle they stole between 1855 and 1885?" he asked. It was as much a challenge as a question, the sort of question you asked looking down the sights of a gun where reality equals a target.The implication was clear; there was "good reason"to fear and kill those Apaches. "But there were only eight of them, in the whole of Mexico, alone and on foot," I replied. "Anda dog they'd picked up." But later on, to my surprise,when the seminargot underway, my host once so fiery and eloquent on the topic of terror,so in commandof his vast historymachine, fell silent as the grave, slumped into the furthestrecess of his padded chair. A young tenuredprofessor chaired the occasion in a don't mess with me manner, refusing to allow me to begin with the summaryI'd prepared."That won't be necessary!"he repeatedarchly, asking nearly all the questions which, like the host's reactionto the Apache story, were not only aimed at makingsense of terroras somebody's profit, but in doing so furtheredthe terrorhe purported to be explaining. The sad greyness of the late afternoonspreadthroughthe room. Pale and forbiddinglysilent, the graduatestudentssat as sentinels of truthfor oncoming generations.Why were they so frightened?What did they feel? Maybe they felt nothing? ReluctantlyI met my host for a cup of coffee two days laterat the university. He was insistent and invoked all sorts of nostalgia to smooth over unstatedtensions. But what a climax! Wherewas the genteel comfortof his imaginedpast of heroic intellectualsin the sub-basementof what was said to be a perfect copy of an Oxfordcollege where we now sat holding undrinkable coffee from a slot machine while four or five gangling young men from the ghetto horsedaroundmenacing one another,and the clientele, teasing of course, as they played unbearably loud music from the jukebox?The host leaned forwardagainstthe noise. The arteries pulsed in his stout neck. "Have you read Bordovitch's work on the Stalin trials,publishedin Parisin the fifties?"he shouted. "No,"I had to confess. He leaned forwardagain. "Do you know why the prisonersadmittedto crimes they hadn't committed?"he demandedwith a sharpedge to his voice. "Because they were deprived of sleep - for weeks at a time," he thundered."In white cells with the light on all the time!" He sat back, glowing like a white light himself, grimly satisfied, even a little exultant and happy now that he had pushed terror'sdark murkwell away from those politically staged performanceswhere confusion and confession workedto each other's benefit. He insisted on driving me the five blocks to where I was staying. "Hereyour car is your tank,"he said. Talking Terror 2 In the Republic of Colombia in South America an official State of Emergency has been in force, now on, now off, now on again, for as long as most people can remember.The timing and rhythm of the application and enforcement of this

Mick Taussig

of measure Brecht surgivesus someideaof theoperation statesof whatBertolt in and Cocalled"ordered disorder," sincedecades veyingGermany the thirties of lombiahas been definedas being in a stateof chaos such thatpredictions have imminent a revolution, bloodbath,or a military dictatorship beenmadeon of an almostdailybasis.Today,in a totalpopulation some27 million,beingthe in LatinAmerica, so thirdlargest with widespread assassinations striking, it is of the only viableopposition said,somethirty peoplea day,with500 members downin the streetsoverthe pasttwo years, party,the Uni6nPatribtica, gunned withan estimated carried by the morethan149 death out assassinations 11,000 in the named the national overroughly sametimepesquads Congress recently buta smallfraction andwithover 1,000named riod, (surely peopledisappeared existswhichis no of theactualnumber) therecanbe no doubt a situation that on less violentthanit is sinister, thatits sinister and quality depends thestrategic whichstalksterror's andto whichit talk use of uncertainty mystery around and alwaysreturns. withinor outsidethe country, a as But is this situation widely understood, in Stateof Emergency Benjamin's sense?Is it, in otherwords,seenas theexceptionor the rule,andwhatpoliticalandindeedbodilyconsequences mightthere as of discourse be in constantly on the idealof Order in the prominent harping and ritualtheState,theArmed Forcesandthemediawiththeirincessant almost when obisticreference the"state publicorder," of to particularly it seemspretty Forcesin anageas defined the viousthattheseveryforces,especially Armed by have as theorists one of "lowintensity warfare," as muchto gainfrom Pentagon in a disorder fromorder andprobably gooddealmore? as Indeed, thecase of wherein the to is the Armed Forces,disorder surelyintrinsic its modusoperandi art as arbitrariness poweris practiced an exquisitelyfinme of social control. of as such what Furthermore, does it meanto definme a situation existsin Colombia fromthenorm, and as chaotic,giventhatthe chaosis everyday, a deviation not in a strategically order less thanit is no politicalsenseis a disordered important a anordered disorder? What doesit mean,andwhatdoesit taketo envisage society as breakingdown to the point of dying - as the headlinesin the January24,

1988,editionof El Diario of New Yorkputsit for Colombia whenthereis not is to everyreason suggestthatthisstateof emergency mostdecidedly theexnation-state not for manyothersas (if ceptionbut the rule for this particular and well)? In the postmodem world,as the state,the market, the transnational and of arbitrariness planning, enter might corporations intoa new configuration in modemidea,be outdated not the veryconceptof the social,itselfa relatively In and so faras it restson assumptions stability structure? whichcase whatis of all thetalkaboutorder about? enat the socialworldin thetensedyet highlymobilewayBenjamin Looking of abouttheconstancy thestateof emergency, us to do withhis dictum couraged talk I thinkwe canstartto understand flow of powerconnecting terror's with the This underthe use of disorder assassination disappearing and people. through
standing requires knowing how to stand in an atmospherewhipping back and forth between clarity and opacity, seeing both ways at once. This is what I call the optics of The Nervous System, and while much of this is conveyed, in a typi-

Terror Usual as

and cally oblique manner,in the notion of the normalityof the abnormal, particularly in the normalityof the state of emergency, what needs pondering- and which automatithis is our advantage,today, in this venue, with our terror-talk a framingand a distancing-effect- is the violent and unexpected cally imposes rupturesin consciousness that such a situationcarries.This is not so much a psychological as a social and culturalconfigurationand it goes to the heartof what is politically crucialin the notion of terroras usual. I am referringto a state of doubleness of social being in which one moves in bursts between somehow accepting the situation as normal, only to be thrown into a panic or shocked into disorientationby an event, a rumor,a sight, something said, or not said - something that even while it requires the normal in orderto make its impact, destroys it You find this with the terriblepoverty in a ThirdWorld society and now in the centersof U.S. cities too, such as Manhattan; people like you and me close their eyes to it, in a mannerof speaking,but sudevent occurs, perhapsa dramaticor poignantor ugly one, denly an unanticipated and the normalityof the abnormalis shown for what it is. Then it passes away, terroras usual, in a staggeringof position that lends itself to survival as well as despair and macabrehumor. It is this doubleness of social being and its shockchangingthat the MarxistplaywrightBertoltBrechtused, but in reverse, so as to problematize the cast of normalcy sustaining the reality-effect of the public sphere. Seismology, a superior form of semiology, is what the critic Roland Barthescalled this techniqueof Brecht's. Terror'stalk in such circumstancesfluctuatesbetween the firmly sensed and usually quite dogmaticcertaintiesthat there indeed exists a reason and a center, on the one hand,and the uncertainties a diffuse, decenteredrandomnesson the of other. Take for instancethe editorialof one of the country's main daily newspapers, El Espectador,26th of February,1986, entitledEl Desorden Publico. First there is a breathless listing of the "successive acts of terror"that have "shaken the country"in the past week...the mounting attacks on journalists, one being killed in Florencia, anotherin Cali, the confrontationof police with Indians in the remotedesertpeninsulaof the Guajirawhere eight people were killed, the asthe sassinationof ten peasantsin the municipalityof La Paz in Santander, blowof oil pipe lines now amountingto 65 million pesos, the assassinationof a ing up young Uni6n Patri6ticaactivist in Cauca, the attackingof a police post between Pereiraand Armeniaby a guerrillaunit of the EPL which killed one policeman in and woundedfour others,massive peasantdemonstrations the frontierDepartment of Arauca,the escalationof drug traffickingand, on top of all this, according to the editorial, the double-game of the guerrilla,talking peace but making war. "This, in broad strokes,"continues the editorial, "is the internalsituation of the country,convulsed and explosive" such thatit seems as if
there might be an intimate connection between the diverse factors that conspire against the maintenanceof peace and public security.But although that may not exist, there are so many repeated outbursts from different battlefields that, wanting to or not, the forces that operate against public

MickTaussig peace converge with equal and destructiveimpetus to the common task of destructionin which they find themselvesengaged.

Terrible indeed. talk, as fromsocialcontext we entera worldin which Forcesbecomedisembodied the need thingsbecomeanimated, contradictory to both paralleling impossibly establish disestablish center, motiveforce,or a reasonexplaining and a a everyan even anthropomorthis thing.Strangely NervousSystemacquires animistic, forcesfindingthemselves forcesconverging, conspiring, phic,quality factors in engagedin commondestruction andjust as strangely, the entirelitanyof in absenceof any thereis this terrifying recorded the editorial, terrifyingforces be mention theArmed of Forcesof theStateitself.Couldtheselatter thetrulyinvisibledreadthatcenters Nervousness theNervousSystemwhosesemiothe of but sis involvesnot so muchthe obviousmeaning whatRolandBarthes called theobtusemeaning signs? of In the manywritten and works theforemost by spokesman guruof theArmed talk Fernando Landazabal Forces,General Reyes,terror's assumesthe situation in is partof an order,a globalorderof cosmic prevailing Colombia decidedly in and betweendemocracy communism whichpoorThirdWorld confrontation is countries thefirstto be fractured wherethefrontlineof combat drawn. and are In his rendering reality,in bookssuchas ThePrice of Peace andSocialConof betweenthe Posiand flict, one sensesquiteacutelythe comingling fluctuation wouldputit) of tivistStyleof the hardfact,the Abstract (as Sartre Empiricism of circular causation between the diagrams poverty, morality, depicting patterns with the spellbinding wonderof the injustice,violence,and so forth,together and As of are death,order, hierarchy. I see it theselatter metaphysics patriotism, witha senseof the verythingsthatcreateandcontrola senseof fixingtogether in slippage, especiallyobviousandimportant the case of death,so finitea conand nectionwiththe infinite, evenmoreobviousin the case of the new tacticof which,as JulioCortzar pointedout in the earlyeighties,thinking disappearing in a creates new circleto Dante's notonly of the 30,000disappeared Argentina, fact hell in thatit combines terrible of loss withtheever-present thatthe the hope the will disappeared tomorrow, next day...re-emerge.Hencemothersare reas ported sayingthattheywepttearsof joy to findthedeadbodyof theirdaughFor ter or son, becauseat least thenthey were sure.But thatis the exception. in realism" a new light, mostit's a dream world,whichdecidedly puts"magical as whentheyrushto a site where,in a dream, friendhasseen thedisappeared. a As FabiolaLalinde,who last saw her son, a member the Marxist-Leninist of Communist beingputontoa truck theColombian Army,on the 3rdof Party, by the 1984,putsit: "Ifthedaysaredifficult, nightsaretorture, October, especially when I dreamof [the Spanishis con, thusmeaningdreaming with]Luis Fernando."
Because more than dreams they are real in that I see him returnhome with and the smile thathe always has, togetherwith his tranquility ease, and when I ask him where he's been and he's about to answer, that's when I always wake up, in that part of the dream.It's so real that at the very moment of awakeningI have no idea what's happeningor where I am, and to returnto

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reality is sad and cruel afterhaving had him in frontof me. At othertimes I spend the night runningthroughbush and ravines, searchingamongstpiles of cadavers, witnessing battles and Dantesque scenes. It makes you crazy. And this happens to the whole family, as well as to his friends. Even the neighborshave told me many times thatthey dreamof him.

And our dreaming?For are we not neighborstoo? As for hardfacts, GeneralLandazabalis adamant,at least until Septemberof 1986, that evidence indicatingthat the ArmedForces is behindmany if not most of the assassinationsand disappearances Colombia is false. Questionedin La in Semana by Antonio Caballero(whose name now appearson the Medellin Death List) regarding his statement that the only paramilitarygroups in the country were the guerrillas,the general replied that while it was beginning to appearto him that there might perhapsbe some sort of organization,even a nationallyorganized one, whose functionwas to assassinatemembersof the Uni6n Patri6tica (by far the most popular left-wing party in Colombia), he really had no idea about this. Moreover,he went on, it was infamous to connect the Armed Forces with the assassins now supposedly so abundantin Colombia in the wake of the cocaine trade.
That would be to enter into the most tremendouscontradictionwith the professionalmoralityand honorof the ArmedForces.It is said thatthereis a "dirtywar"going on, but the Armed Forces do not participatein that.They combat subversionwith all the means of the Constitutionand the Law, but not by paying assassins on motorbikes or placing bombs. That would be infamous, and we cannottoleratesuch infamy to be mouthed.

In Gabriel Garcia Marquez' novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Santiago Nassar walks the hot Colombiantown duringthe night's revelry unawarethat he is being pursuedby two men armed with knives passionatelycommittedto killing him. A question of honor. It's a small enough town for its inhabitantsto sense somethingstrange.They see the armedmen searchingfrom place to place, yet they can't believe that they will really kill - or ratherthey believe and disbelieve at one and the same time, but proof comes sure enough with Santaigo Nasar's bloody disembowelment- all of which I take to be paradigmaticof refers to as the "dirtywar"which he says "is said to be what GeneralLandazabal going on." Of course the point of such a war, of the phrasing of such a war, which is also called by some nationalcommentatorsa war of silencing, is thatas the Generalsays it is "said to be" going on which means, in political and operational terms, that it is and it isn't - in just the same way as the abnormalis normal and disorderis orderlyand the whole meaningof the relatively moder term "society," let alone the meaning of the social bond, suddenly becomes deeply problematic.After all what does it mean to have a society at (undeclared)war with itself? "In Colombia,"my twenty-year-oldfriendfrom one of the poor sugarcanetowns of the CaucaValley, Edgar,constantlyassuredme with smug finality, "You can't trustanyone." We were in a bus in 1981 heading into the frontierprovince of the Putumayo, readinga Chronicleof a Death Foretold, and I commentedhow strangean air of

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11

reality the tale conveyed, everybody sensing yet not believing what was about to happen."Ahprofesor,"he replied,"butthere's always one who knows." In the murk,an eye watching, an eye knowing. Here you can't trustanyone. There's always one who knows. Paranoiaas social theory. Paranoiaas social practice. Note the critically importantfeature of the war of silencing is its geodecenteredness yet we cangraphical,epistemological, and military-strategic not but feel that it is organized from some center no matter how much the general denies his knowing. The leaders of the Uni6n Patri6ticasay this (undeclared) war (which is said to be going on) is the outcome of the Pentagon's plan for Latin America, the infamous "doctrineof national security"which we can read about in the general's books where it is presentedin a favorable, even redemptive,light. Side by side with this doctrine, and the symmetricalparanoidcircles of conspiracy traced aroundit, there is this new type of warfarethat has come to be is called "low intensityconflict"whose leading characteristic to bluraccustomed realities and boundariesand keep them blurred.That is anothereye to contend with, grotesquelypost-modemin its constitutivecontingency. Talking Terror 3 And now we startto feel this eye watching in other places as well. Hearing,too. The tira is what the studentsin the university in BogotAcalled it, meaning spy, and it was, they intimated,right therein the classroom. Curiouslythis particular word for spy - the tira - also means throwing, and its opposite - pulling. And as if that isn't strange enough, tira is also used to mean fucking. All this makes for a curious networkof associations, grantingus some rare insight into of the erotics not only of spying but of the terror-machine the State as well, with its obscuremedley of oppositions,seduction,and violence. Sappo, frog, is the term used for the informerin the sugarcanetowns in western Colombia,remindingme of the frog's role in sorcery and of its slimy habitat between earth, sky, and water, where it croaks songs of love and war yet, both like and unlike the informer,is suddenlymuted when people pass by. When you walk throughthe cane fields at night- as only the peasants, cane-workers,and the occasional consipirator, revolutionary organizer, and anthropologist ever would - you become the auditoryequivalent of a sensitive photographicplate, registeringunderthe black canopy of the immense skies the deafening silence of suddenlystilled sound. And the frog? I guess it's all ears too. But who knows from whence come these termsfor spies and whence they go? Their awkwardlyconstellatedmeanings register a compoundof slime and ominous quiet, no less obscure, and no less pointed, than the Death Squads themselves. In these suddenlymuted fields of power the neatnessof the symbol itself gives way to the rapidlypulsing underbelly,the pushing and pulling, of Nervous Systematicity. And for the poor young men of Colombia, which is to say for the majorityof young men, there is the eye of the librettamilitaror militarypass, possession of which means thatone has performedthe eighteen or twenty-fourmonthsmilitary service demandedby the state. If you don't have it, the authoritiescan pick you up as they please, and most employers will refuse to hire a man without one. At

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the dance-hallsin Bogota where the young unemployedand workingclass congregate on Saturdaynights, it was not uncommonin 1986 for the police to drag off those without the libretta,often hosing them down in the courtyard the poof lice stationand leaving them therelocked in the freezing night, especially if they couldn't come up with a satisfactorybribe. Every time a bus is stopped by the police or the army, the men are made to presenttheirpapers.Every time a reten or barrieris erected aroundwhat the forces of public orderdeem disorder,those who wish to pass have to present their papers,and to be without them may one day cost your life. This eye is merciless for the poor young men of the Republic who therebybecome not only victim but victimizer,ensuringterror'snormalcy. Take the case of Jairo with whom I was speaking in one of the sugarcane plantationtowns to which I have been returningevery year since 1969 in the Cauca Valley in Western Colombia. Several months back he had finished his compulsorymilitaryservice and now had his librettamilitar.We startedtalking about the army and the guerrillas, about him being on patrol in the cordillera central. Did he ever get a chance to talk with the enemy? No! There was a young guy he once knew who lived down the street, though. And he waved his hand carelessly. Why are they fighting? I asked. He struggled for words. "It's to do with the government,"he said eventually. "The guerrillaare against unemployment." " Well.Whatabout that?" " It'sbadbecause arecommunists. They're they against democracy." He told me the same thing a few months later when, having searched for seven months he landeda construction in Cali - a job thatpaid four dollars job a day except thattransport lunch took close to half of thatand the job would and last only seven weeks so that the employer could avoid the social security costs that apply after eight weeks employment.That's the democracyhe was defending. And it took him seven months to find thatjob - with his libretta militar. I've known him since he was a tiny boy and his motheris an even older friendof mine. He's exceptionally sweet and gentle. The other day he was washing my two and half year old boy's hair,all giggles and froth. to I asked. "Doyouget a chance talkwiththeguerrilla?" "When capture we them." "Dotheytalk?" "Wemakethemsing." "Domanysing?" "Most." about "What thosewhodon't?" "Wekill them.The comandante orders to. We tie theirhandsbehind us theirbacksandstuffa wet toweloverthemouthso thatwhentheybreathe Mostsing. Orelse we putstakesup their theyfeel as if they'redrowning. Thosewholie, we kill, likewhentheytellus wheretheenemyis fmgernails. not on butthey're there. lotdepends thecomandante." A

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"Andwhen the guerillacatchesone of our officers," added,"he's cut into he in way, pieces."All this transpired the most matter-of-fact just like we'd been of he earlier talking thetomatoes wastransplanting. or of We got to talkingaboutthe "cleaning" limpieza Cali, thatincredible and homosexuals, transvestites, all manner processin whichbeggars, prostitutes, of streetpeople supposedly involvedin crimeandpettycocainedealingwere and beingwipedout by pistolandmachine fire frompick-ups motorbikes. gun Thatis whatone heardeveryday. But obviouslynotjust thosesortof people in Students Cali wereaffected. was Anyonecouldbe a target. Everyone scared. toldme thatmerelywiththe soundof a motorbike wouldhidethemselves, they is this andfew peoplewentoutat night.Whilethere reason distinguish "cleanto definedpoliticalassassinations, is also there ing"fromthe moreconventionally fromthe creation terror of unthrough something havein common apart they certainviolence-and this has to do with the horrificsemanticfunctionsof firmboundaries whereonly murkexists so thatmoremurk cleansing, creating of canexist,purifying publicsphere thepolluting the powerswhichthedominant whose salientpolitical voices of societyattribute the hampaor underworld to feature in its beingstrategically lies borderless invisibleyet infiltrating but Other; homosexuals, communists, left-wing guerrilleros, prostitutes, decidedly massof the undeand beggars, whatI guess we couldcall the darkthreatening - which,whenyou thinkaboutit, doesn'tleave too manypeople servingpoor in theupperworld. thefearsome In "the unconscious cleanslogicof thepolitical shelvesof endlesscans of soap or limpieza to mindsupermarket ing" brings and and land. powders carwax thatdailyscrub polishthismalnourished Now isin bizarre of ritualistic formsoftendesuingfortha stream cadavers, disfigured rived from U.S. televisionimageryand commodities such as pesticideslike this fervoris notwithout certain a and Kan-Kill, cleansing genealogy conscious manipulation. As regards genealogy, the hearken backto therepresentations thehampa of or criminalunderworld Havanain early twentieth of centuryworksof the celeOrtizin whichcrimeis reduced crimibrated Cuban to Fernando anthropologist is nality and criminality seen as the naturaloutcomeof being black and is Santeria. underworld thephantasmagoric The construction practicing paranoid of theruling to in of class,andwithregards themanipulation thisfertileimagery Cali-like Havana,capital of. sugar, slums of blacks-hearken to Chris Birkbeck's before studyof the mediaandimagesof crimetherein the seventies in thedeathsquads emerged themid-eighties. had the acComparing newspaper countsof crimewith whathe foundby hangingout with police andprisoners whilehe was livingin theslums,he foundnothing validate ubiquitous to the asthat underworld existedoutsideof the imagination cresumption an organized atedby thepress(or,I wouldadd,created themoreimportant medium the of by in Not exaggerated radio). onlyweretheaccounts thenewspapers extraordinarily it but,to my way of thinking, was as if theyweredesignedto createandreproduce a tropicalversionof the Hobbesian world,nasty,brutish,and short,in which(as my friend was me) Edgar alwaysreadyto remind "youcan'ttrust any-

14

as Terror Usual

one" - and thus a city of the swamp shroudedin a nebulousatmosphereof insecurity, trulyin a stateof emergency. Together with this Hobbesian fear in which it is precisely the individualization and freaky unexpectednessof violence that is strategic, there is a no less essentialist critically importantcountermove to claim an organized, structured, a core to the dread- as with the notion of an organizedunderworld, magically and potentrace apart,inhabitingboth a metaphorical an actualgeographicalzone within the city. This of course is the ultimatepostmodernelusiveness, claiming both centeredness and decenterednessin a social struggle combining meaning and senselessness with tortureand death, and Birkbeckcould note in the press as early as 1977 the urgentcall for a clean-up, for the limpieza- harbingerof our time now when the metaphorbecame blasting fact. 'The city urgently needs said the daily newspaper,El Occidente,echoing previous deaseptic treatment," of mandsfor "eradicating of criminalactivity,"for "purification the environfoci and for "cleaning the center."What we have to understand,then, is not ment," merely some horrificprocess in which imageryand myth work out from a political unconscious to be actualized,but rathera socio-historicalsituationin which the image, of crime, for instance, is no less real than the reality it magnifies and distortsas terror'stalk. And now Jairowas talking, telling me about his having to resign, while in the army, from a special force he belonged to for three months in Palmira,the town across the river Cauca from Cali. As he put it, the mission of this force was to cruise aroundin taxis and on motorbikes- powerful motorbikes,he noted - so as to kill criminals, drug addicts, and sicarios or professional killers. The soldiers in his unit received booklets with photos of the people they had to kill, and they undertooktarget practice shooting at human forms from motorbikes and phony taxis. They never wore uniforms and their hair was grown longer than regulation.To kill they would get as close as possible, with a colt .45 or a 9-mm pistol. There were eighteen of them, plus four sub-officials and one captain. They did most of theirkilling at night but workedthroughthe city duringthe day getting to know their victims' habits.Therewere about fifty people on thatdeath list. And only three weeks before, to the day, the general It was straightforward. was quoted as vehemently denying any possible connection whatsoeverbetween the armyand deathsquads. Talking Terror 4 Above all the Dirty War is a war of silencing. Thereis no officially declaredwar. No prisoners.No torture.No disappearing.Just silence consuming terror'stalk for the main part,scaringpeople into saying nothing in public thatcould be construed as critical of the Armed Forces. This is more than the productionof silence. It is silencing, which is quite different. For now the not said acquires significance and a specific confusion befogs the spaces of the public sphere, which is where the action is. It is this presence of the unsaidwhich makes the simplest of public-spacetalk arrestingin this age of terror the namingby the Mothersof the Disappearedin public spaces of the names of the disappeared,togetherwith their photographs,

Mick Taussig

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is in in collective acquiring formof ritual whichwhatis important notso acts the but muchthefacts,sincetheyarein theirway well known, theshiftin sociallomemcationin whichthosefactsareplaced,fillingthepublicvoidwithprivate ory. is Thepointaboutsilencingandthe fearbehindsilencing not to erasememof deepwithinthefastness the ory.Farfromit Thepointis to drivethememory in and so individual as to createmorefearanduncertainty whichdream reality of this Againandagainone hears fromthemothers thedisappeared, commingle. on that likeFabiola Lalinde whodreams herson,lastseenbeingtaken a truck by her to theColombian hasreturned her.Justas he's aboutto answer quesarmy, haveyou been?," wakesup andhe's not there."It'sso real," she tion,"Where I of at she says,"that the verymoment awakening haveno ideawhat'shappento ing or whereI am, andto return realityis sad andcruelafterhavinghim in front me." of a 'The truepicture thepastflits by,"as Benjamin of prinexpressed cardinal of and cipleof his philosophy history, "eventhe deadshallnotbe safefromthe Other nights enemyif he wins.Andthisenemyhasnotceasedto be victorious." forhersonin pilesof cadavers. sheracesthrough andravines bush hunting withinthe fastas memory nightmare Silencingservesnot only to preserve of but ness of the individual, to preventthe collectiveharnessing the magical Hertz,in his classic 1907essayon the collectivereprepowerof (whatRobert of souls" thespaceof death therestless of called"theunquiet sentation death) souls thatreturn againandagainto hauntthe living,suchas the soulsof those forcethat of a Thishaunting contains quotient magical who diedviolentdeaths. as canbe channeled the individual, you can witnessin the Central Cemetery by whenmassesof people,mainly the of BogotaeveryMonday, dayof thednimas, and specificor in general, by poor,cometo prayfor thelost soulsof purgatory, of relieffromtheproblems unemployment, meansof thisachievemagical povto this Summing up is the imageubiquitous Coerty,failedlove, and sorcery. of for folk religion(on sale outsidethe cemetery, instance) theAnima lombian handsuplifted aboutto be and chained theLonelySoul,a youngwoman, Sola, consumed fire.Behindherare massivestone by closed wallsanda barred door,apparently do of Whatthe Mothers theDisappeared is to harnessthis magicalpower of the collectively and lost souls of purgatory relocatememoryin the contested awayfromthe fearpublicsphere, fastnessof the indiand numbing crazy-making death and vidualmindwhereparamilitary squads of wouldfix it. the Statemachinery concealment the so courageously 'In naming namesandholdthe photographic imageof the deadanddising createthe specificimage the mothers appeared, 1 necessaryto reversepublicand Statememory. As women,givingbirthto life, theycollectively
't
'

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hold the political and rituallifeline to deathand memoryas well. The place of the name in terror's talk is the place occupied by literal language, pre-lapsarian,the God-given world of names. But the name is also, as State-ordainedidentification, an essential requisite of bureaucraticprocedure. This meeting of God and State in the Name, no less thanthe strangelaws of reciprocity pertainingto the folk doctrineof Purgatoryand sin, is also open to a cerin tain appropriation what I take to be a particularlymale sphere of interaction between privateand public spheres. I am referringto the history recounted(and thus collectivized) to a small public gatheringin Bogota by the ColombianSenaof tor Ivan Marulanda how he had enteredthe Medellin offices of the F-2, one of the ColombianArmy's many and ever-changingsemi-secretunits, to inquireinto man. Ivan was sure they were holding him, and the whereaboutsof a disappeared just as surely the F-2 denied it. Forcing his way into the cells, Ivan screamedout the man's name again and again, for this would be the last possible chance, and, like a miracle, the disappearedman's voice could be heardcalling back. He was there. Meanwhile the police had diffused a notice to the press that the man's body had been found dead on a garbageheap in Medellin. And in furtherconnection with naming it should be pointed out that Ivan Marulanda'sname recently appearedon the Medellin Death List, along with the names of thirty-threeothers who have pitted their talk in public spaces against official talk. The world not only began with namingas with the original Adamic language, but may well end with it as well- perversely essentialist life and of of deathnames splicing the arbitrariness the sign to the arbitrariness the state's power. But what about people like yourself caught up in such matters?What sort of talk have you got? Whataboutmyself, for thatmatter? Talking Terror 5
...and all the werewolves who exist in the darknessof history andkeep alive thatfear withoutwhich therecan be no rule. "The Importanceof the Horkheimer& Adomo, Dialectic of Enlightenment, Body."

It was at a friend's place in Bogota in late 1986 that I first met Roberto. My friendis a journalistand had told me she was worriedabouthim. Amnesty Internationalhad gotten him a ticket out of the country,but he had not used it, and it was said that he was being shunned by his own political group as unstable.He was in his early thirties,an engineer, who in the very poor neighborhoodsin the south of the city had, with a left-wing political group, been organizingmeetings on silencing - on the repressionof humanrights. Togetherwith anotherof the organizershe had been picked up from the meeting by the army at night, taken away, disappeared,and tortured this in a country whose army totally denies its involvementin such activities. Thus, where the official voice can so strikingly contradictreality, and by means of such contradictioncreate fear, does Magical Realism move into its martialform. By a miracle he had not been killed when they put him in a bag, shot him throughthe head, and left him for dead in a public park. Like the disappearedthat returnalive in dreams, he had come back, if

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not to a dream,in the strict sense of the term,then certainlyto an unreallife-state in which, being living testimony of what the army was doing, he was in constant fear of being killed and was forced into hiding while the army mounteda campaign saying he was nothing more thana "vulgarkidnapper." They had takenhis papers, without which he couldn't acquire a passport, and his lawyer was adamant that if he went to the DAS (the Security Police) to renew his papers he would never leave their offices alive. After one brief and accuratenotice in the country's leading dailies, nothing more had appearedin the media. And while he was desperatelyafraidof being found, it was the media that, in his opinion, could keep him alive. He had to keep his name alive in the same public sphere that could kill him. A week or so later I bumped into him in the street carrying the morning's newspaper. He told me was going to live in Europe, or Canada, in a week. The army torturedme for two "Don't you know?"he asked. "I was disappeared. then shot me but the bullet passed along the back of my neck."His children days were with theirmotherin a place where there were a lot of people for protection. On hearing I was leaving for a trip west for a week or more with my wife and three children he impressed upon me: "Always make sure that if anything happens to you there will be publicity. Make sure there are journalists who know where you are going. Don't associate with anyone on the Left. Just be a tourist." To my confusion he added, "Don't wear foreign clothes." He had a file on what he called "my case," and I said I would like to help. Around five o'clock one afternoon he called without giving his name. "Do you know who is talking?was his way of saying who he was. He wanted to meet at a busy supermarketand I went straight away. Approaching the meeting I began to feel nervous and scanned the cars for police spies. Everythingstartedto look different, wrappedin the silent isolation of unknowableor ambiguoussignificance. He was pacing the pavement and I tried to make it look to anyone watching as if it was a delightful and unexpected encounter. He not quite so much. I said I had to buy bread.We enteredthe supermarket togetherwith many women pushingone anotherin a ragged queue at the breadcounter.I invited him to our place but he wanted to go to his so we walked there, in a roundabout way. There was a public phone on the comer and he asked if I wanted to call Rachel, which struckme as strangeand I said I didn't. He lived in a basement apartment which, to get into you had to pass through two doors, one after the other, each with two locks. He was clean and neat in a was light brownsportscoat and open shirt.The corridorleading to the apartment dark and damp and he took a long time to open the second door. I struggled to find a topic of conversation.We enteredinto a vault-like space with a thick corrugated milky-green plastic roof over a tiny dining place. The apartmenthad been the courtyardof a three-storiedhouse. Furtherinside there was a neatly made darkblue covered double bed with a white clothes cupboardforming one wall. There were threepairs of shoes neatly laid out. It was a friend's apartment and he said he had to leave in two days. More and more the place gave me the feeling of a cage or of a laboratory,with us both keepers and kept, experimenters and subjectsof someone's experiment.

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Terror Usual as

with us both keepersand kept, experimenters feeling of a cage or of a laboratory, and subjectsof someone's experiment. He sat me down at the tiny table littered with newspapercuttings and magazines, a half-emptybottle of AguardienteCrystal,and the remainsof a giant bottle of Coca-Cola.Therewas one uprightchair."Whatwould you like?"he asked. "Whateveryou've got," I answered. He moved about awkwardly, groping for something to do, I suppose, and put a cutting in front of me. Very tidily blueinked on the marginit read El Espectador 12. IV. 86. There were photos of two young men. The one on the left was said to have been killed. The second was said to be Roberto, but he was unrecognizable to me without his beard, his mouth bashed wide, and two policemen watching him as he walked througha door. The articlerepeatedwhat my journalistfriendhad told me about him being disappeared,and Robertotold me, in wonder, that the very parkwhere the army disposed of him dead inside the bag was where ten years ago he had crashlandedin a plane in which all the passengersdied except for him and one other. As I read, trying to concentrate,I became aware not of being anxious - that would have been too direct, too honest a self-appraisalof what was going on but of trying to represswave after wave of foaming fear and thereby,somehow, merely throughthe awareness of the force of that repression,feeling in control instead of fearful. I rememberedhow merely eleven days before, arrivingat the airportat night aftera year away from the country,we had been stoppedabruptly out on the darkand isolated highway by men saying they were police. They went throughour bags as if they were tearingthem apart,saying they were looking for arms. Luckily there was a friend in a car behind with the lights on making it, I suppose, harderfor them to screw us aroundand we were able, after showing them our papersfrom the local university,to resume ourjourney."Thereare stories going around,"a friend later told me, "of a certain general's bodyguard dressing up as airportpolice at night and hittingpeople up." Otherpeople said it was because of a rumor that an importantmember of the M 19 guerrilla had flown in that day. Nobody could explain it, of course, but inexplicabilityis not the best thing to acknowledge in these situationsof terroras usual as one fumbles with contradictory advice and rumors.In my notebook I had jotted down a short time later, having listened to many friends talking about "the situation" "It all sounds so incrediblyawful. And aftertwo days I'm getting used to it."Roberto fussed around,poureda shot of aguardientefor me and fussed some more his with copies of cuttingsconcerninghis case. He couldn't finmd keys, and I realized that you couldn't get out without them. Then we found them and he left without a word, the locks grating- all four of them- leaving me alone in that white cage whose door was reinforcedon the inside by heavy gauge wire mesh, also paintedwhite. I tried to read-on,propelledby some dubious notion that this was being helpful, that this was what he dearly wanted me to do; to witness and and ultimatedisappearance his case and of to follow, in retrospect,the trajectory hence his very being throughthe media trails of the public sphere while all the while there was a flutteringsensation which as soon as I was aware of it went away. It recurred,stronger.I felt I was being set up. I tried to read more but my eyes only flicked over the pages. Not a sound. A few minutes went by. I realized

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nobody knew where I was other than Roberto. Why hadn't I called Rachel? I looked up at the roof. It was only corrugatedplastic. Almost transparent. Surely and easy to breakthrough?But then these places were built to be burglar-proof, more closely it didn't seem that easy. But this was absurd.He'd be back looking soon. I was a miserablecoward. I tried to read more of the cuttings.My eye was caught by randomphrases,exacerbatingthe tension- as if all thathorrificstuff scatteredacross the table in the feeble light of the Bogota gloom filteredthrough the plastic was about what was about to happen to me. I had premonitionsof how I would feel and to what desperatelengths I would go if I panicked.I didn't feel or allow myself to feel panicky at that stage. That was the most curious thing. I saw myself from afar, as it were, in another world, going crazy, not knowing what was happening,what was being plotted, what would happennext, unable to breathe.I looked again at the door with its tough wire. Immovable.It was raininghard.Every now and then a few drops fell throughonto my head and neck. I turnedback to the crumpledcuttings from the newspapersand the cheap Xerox copies of letters between institutionsand governmentagencies and then, truly,waves of panic flooded over me absolutely unableto move waiting for the police to surge throughthe door. Any moment. Dark suits. Machine guns waving. Machismo ejaculatingin the underground opera of the State. The handcuffs - esposas, in Spanish, also meaning wives - grinding into your wrists. Later, recountingwhat had happenedto friendswho lived all their life in Bogota, I was made to realize that this fear was not without foundationsince it is said to be not uncommonfor victims of police or armybrutalityto become informers. Then the door opened and in came Roberto with a small bottle of aguardiente. I was relieved but wanted to leave. The rain drummeddown. Even the elements were against me leaving. He pulled up a stool by my side and poureda drinkinto two tiny olive-green plastic tumblers."I'm not a drunk,Miguel," he said, and proceeded to tell me how he was tortured,how bad it was when they changed the handcuffs for rope, how he felt like drowning with the wet towel stuffed down his mouth,and what it was like being in the bag and shot but not killed. He leant his head forwardalmost onto my lap and guided my finmger through the hair to the soft bulging wounds of irregularlydimpled flesh. a "Like worshiperswith Christ's wounds,"murmured frienddays later to whom I was telling this. "Surelythe armyknows you are here?"I asked. "No!"he replied, "I've learnt the skills of the urbanguerrilla,"and reachingfor a blue writing pad he told me that he spent nearly all his time in the apartmentand that he was writing about his case, trying, for instance, to win the attorneygeneral over to his side and not believe in the campaignof defamationspreadby the army. The attorneygeneral had served as a judge in the small town in Antioquia where Roberto had been raised- malnourishedfrom the start, he noted, in a large peasant family, and unable to walk until he was twenty-onemonthsold after which, as a teenager,he hadbecome a famous athlete.All this was in the letterto the attorneygeneral. He asked what I thoughtabout his case and showed me more correspondence I with Amnesty International. mumbledaboutpeople I knew and ways of getting his story publicized, but I felt overwhelmedby the situation.Then he sprungme.

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when you leave?"My heartsank.I so much "CouldI stay in yourapartment a wanted helpbutto havehimuse the apartment to wouldbe to endanger whole withRachelandthethreekids.I felt themost bunchof otherpeople,beginning took the formof not being terrible coward,especiallybecausemy cowardice was for his ableto tell himthatI thought situation too dangerous, thatwouldtear that the facadeof normalcy I at least felt we so badlyneededin orderto open and continuebeing and being together thathe neededto survive.In so many I too wasanactiveagentin thewarof silencing. ways I feel terrible less thanhuman. I've becomepartof the processwhich and I makeshim paranoid a pariah. am afraidof the powersrealandimagined and and and thathavetortured almostkilledhim.EvenmoreI'm afraid sickened by of of the inevitability his paranoiac marginalization, peoplebeingsuspicious his it miraculous escape,interpreting as a sign of himpossiblybeinga spy. Andin whichis not theexception therule,everypossibility but the stateof emergency doesn'tstop with actualphysical is a fact. Being victimized the authorities by In In or "case" that'sonlythebeginning. a torture theendto detention. Roberto's he didn'tcomebackto life at all. He's still disappeared, only his case and way me talk existsto haunt in thisendlessnightof terror's andterror's silence. TalkingTerror6 An hourlaterI was withmy kidsat the MoscowCircuswhichwas playingin a the arena one of thefreeways ringing innercity. It was unreal by sports enough, it butcomingon topof the episodeat Roberto's was devastatingly Therain so. was peltingdownoutsidein the pitch-black nightonto the headsof thin-faced and for while,in their peopleclamoring attention sellingcandies peanuts hungry woolenuniforms police- perhaps veryones thathadparticithe the rough-cut order withtheirsadsullenfaces disappearance maintained patedin Roberto's worldwherejoy andexpectancy shonefrom as we movedinsideinto another outside.Herewe wereimpeople'sfaces,so far fromthe fearsandsuspicions mersedin quicklyshiftingscenes of clowns,trapeze artists,balance,strength, costumes.The pink mobile tension,as the performers spunin theirglittering in of flesh,firmandmuscled, the acrobats theirgold andsilvertightsmademe wounds. and thinkof my fingeron Roberto's Laughter wonder through rippled In mostof all was the beginning. the shifting the crowd.But whatI remember in darkness the arena, of two tubeof lightformed the spotlight the immense by clownswerearguing withone another in theprocessbeating and Colombian up to a life-sizedfemalemannequin. Theybeganto tearthe mannequin piecesand Thenthe lightschanged, beatit ontotheground withfuryas thecrowdlaughed. voicecameon: musicblared, a disembodied and "In1986,thisyearof World to Peace,we areproud present..."
on and Thistalkwasgivento theconference 'TalkingTerrorism: Paradigms Models in a Postmodern World,"organizedby the Instituteof the of Humanities Stanford 1988) February, University,