The Froth Of War
The Froth of War
The Nova Music Festival massacre on October 7th isn’t over and won’t be for a very long time. The trauma will stay with the survivors and victims for the rest of their lives no doubt. Whenever a massive traumatic incident like this occurs it is difficult to say where the boundaries of the impact of the trauma lie. Who can rightly claim to have been impacted by the violence? What does it mean to be impacted? This kind of horrific physical violence can be seen to justifiably impact people worldwide.
The response to the murder of the attendees of the outdoor electronic music festival has been global and predictable. Many people express disheartenment that music – that most pure and universal language of joy – was the site of violent murder based on ancient hatred. Others zoom in on an individual or two, telling their hopeful life story and mourning their now absent future accomplishments. Others have taken the event as a symbol that perhaps could communicate the importance of foregoing violence in the future – something we see a lot when there are tragedies. Many people who feel connected in one way or another to a traumatic moment feel they can turn the horror into a symbol that will make those planning violence in the future to think again.
That’s what happened with the Nova Festival, now an exhibit that started in Israel and is appearing in New York City for a short period of time. The exhibit is meant to communicate the horrible loss at the festival of so many innocent people (assuming that perhaps guilty people have it coming) who were just enjoying coming together over music they loved.
The trouble is this kind of exhibit and presentation does not diminish the desire to respond violently, it justifies it. Watching the interviews and discussion in the news piece, you see how the presentation of the artifacts left behind, the lives, and the narrative can only serve as a justification for a violent response. Instead of encouraging abandonment of violence, it makes violence the only possible response. Since the lovers of the universal language of music were gunned down, it’s only right to gun down those who are responsible for such cruelty!
Kenneth Burke puts this very well in his analysis as to why a depiction of the war dead from World War One is not going to be a convincing way to end war, but a boost of energy toward creating the next one. War, Burke argues, is not something that should be seen as an exception to human nature, but an alternative way of being human together, through violence – a mistaken and poorly thought out way to cooperate and live together. Here he is in the essay “War, Response, Contradiction” available in his book The Philosophy of Literary Form:
There are some reasons for believing that the response to a human picture of war will be socially more wholesome than our response to an inhuman one. It is questionable whether the feelings of horror, repugnance, hatred would furnish the best groundwork as a deterrent to war. They are extremely militaristic attitudes, being in much the same category of emotion as one might conceivably experience when plunging his bayonet into the flesh of the enemy. And they might well provide the firmest basis upon which the ‘heroism’ of a new war could be erected. The greater the horror, the greater the thrill and honor of enlistment. (p. 238-9)
When we present what happened at the Nova Music festival as an inhuman, aberrant, exceptional act we open up the possibility for future inhuman, violent, aberrant acts, but now under the label of ‘heroism.’ We could add ‘defending our people,’ ‘protecting our way of life,’ ‘insuring security,’ and various other epithets used by the Israeli Government and United States Government, as well as the German, and many other EU administrations as well. Alternatively, we can present this incident as a way for humans to solve problems together (you will be shot; I will be the shooter this time) and compare it to other modes of human interaction we can select from, and war will be the loser. Presenting violence, attacks on enemies, and war as an exception to normal human behavior gives it a great stigma, allowing others to justify the same sort of violence as a corrective. The solution is to eliminate the exceptional nature of it, calling it one of many human ways to “be.” Here’s Burke a little further down that same page:
If, by picturing only the hideous side of war, we lay the aesthetic groundwork above which a new stimulus to ‘heroism’ can be constructed, might a picture of war as thoroughly human serve conversely as the soundest deterrent to war? I have never seen anyone turn from The Illiad a-froth with desire for slaughter. (239)
Anything that froths us up for war, gets us pumped to kill others, seeks revenge, or “shows the world that these actions can never be justified” will simply become the starter for a future violent conflict. If we see these violent attacks as outside of the realm of human behavior, perpetuated by monsters, we must then take up arms to rid ourselves of the monsters. And the only way we can see it that way is if it is rhetorically presented to us as an argument that needs a conclusion, as an absence of the just, as work that needs to be done – bloody, horrible work, but ok to do in the name of what it means to protect decency.