courage heroism and the postmodern paradox

7/27/2019 Courage Heroism and the Postmodern Paradox

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Jihna SiklovaCourage, Heroism, andthe Postmodern ParadoxI S H O U L D N ' T T H I N K I WAS INVITED TO CONTRIBUTE TO THIS SPECIALissue in order to write about the concept of heroism in antiquity, orC. G. Jung 's for tha t m atter, let alone analyze th e the m e of h eroismas trea ted in the speeches of George W. Bush or his intellectual oppo-nent, Noam Chomsky. What is expected of m e, more likely, is to helpdevelop an und erstand ing of how courage and heroism w ere perceivedby the citizens of those states of a central and eastern Europe that isnow described as post-Comm unist. I am not sure wh ethe r I am to dealw ith the state of m ind prio r to the revolution of 1989 or up to the pres-ent. There is a notable lack of data for th e latter.

It is a difficult task because the lives of citizens in the CzechRepublic have und ergo ne a very rapid transform ation. Often w e assessquite differently actions that were absolutely clear to us before theevents of 1989. And we are ashamed not only of past weakness andeven collaboration with t he old regim e, but also of civil courage, hero-ism, moral stances, and exalted language. Wewa nt to adapt to the W estas quickly as possible and what we thought in those days is no longer"modem," or even postmodern.

When the Czech secret police (StB) came to arrest me one nightin 1981 and as they w ere leading m e away in handcuffs, I quoted tomy son th e words of Jan Patocka: "Our people have once m ore becom e


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wo rthwh ile." W hen my now grovra-up son recently rem inded m e of it, Ifelt sheepish abou t my sentim enta l patho s. But he reassured m e: "Iwasan adolescent the n and it seemed quite appropriate and 'no rm al' at thetime." In those days we kn ew noth ing of the contradictions in demo-cratic societies or about p ostm odern ism. Ours was a world of black andwhite and the Western culture to which we had no access was marvel-ous. Even if we did not always act accordingly, we all knew what wastrue and false, good and bad. First and foremost we tried to draw onour owTi interrupted traditions, on the prewar plurality of culturalvalues and, in term s of politics, on a dem ocratic system of govern m entand human rights. Expressions such as "postmodern culture" wereincomprehensible labels for us. After 1989 we used to enthusiasticallyrepeat Vaclav Havel's favorite sa)dng: "I believe th at tr u th and love willtriu m ph over lies and ha te," often w ith tears in our eyes. Now, 15 yearslater, again it has become a sort of "pubertally em otive" slogan th at w edo not say aloud any m ore.

What a shame we've changed so much! A shame? Conviction ofthe unskeptical and unquestioning variety is the basis of every ideol-ogy. And ideology is also the tool of every totalitarian system anddictatorship, whether fascist or communist. For this reason we arestill frightened of all ideologies. I was n ot in a position to follow th edevelopment of thought over the past decades of the last century andso am not familiar with the various currents, but I have a feeling thatthe re is a certain similarity betwee n the rebellious generations formedin the W est in the 1960s, especially those concerned w ith th e strugglefor hum an rights and the righ ts of m inorities, and those tha t developedin the countries of central Europe that were part of the Soviet bloc.The people who molded thinking in the West sobered up from theirrevolutionary inebriation and abandoned th eir attem pts to change thewhole of society and unmask capitalism. They then often went to theoth er extrem e of conformism and individualism, w hich the y justify aspostmode rnist. In our situation under com mu nism it was easier: it too k


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the conviction that what one is saying is really true. And we had that.I'm not so sure today.IN 1968, DURING THE "PRAGUE SPRING," WHEN MANY TRIED TO REFORMth e Soviet version of socialism, dozens of enth usias tic West E uropeanstraveled to our country, including writers, journalists, and students,seeking to offer assistance to d em ocratic socialism or "socialism w itha human face" as it was then called. Some of themmore of themperhaps than uswere led by their disgust Mdth capitalism to believeor wanted to believe in an alternative socialist organization of theworld. We were poor and the country's prospects were far from clear.When we asked them what their motivation was, they told us, "Youhave an idea, a mission, a vision; the 'only' thing we have is a highstandard of living."

After they had abandoned their dream of total change, formersupporters of the New Left in Germany, France, and also the UnitedStates acquired a fear of slogans, banners, proclamations, and heroicdeeds. This subsequently led many of them to deny any interpretivemodels and it may also be the reason postmodernism is supportedchiefiy by that disillusioned generation.

The price for that "liberation" from ideas about unidirectionalprogress was em ancip ation from heroism of all kinds, from the possibil-ity of asserting general tru ths and m aking sacrifices for thei r implem en-tatio n. It has also m ea nt accepting subjective and objective justificationof every somersault in one's own opinions. Western intellectuals havethereby "gained" enormous individualism, the fragmentation of allcommunities into monads of individuals, as well as a nostalgia for asense of com m unity and th e loss of an ability to formulate nonc om m er-cial goals; they have tur ned into voluntary ho m eless intellectuals.

Even th e countries of th e E astern bloc saw a trend toward pragma-tism in the socialist regimes of th e last third of the tw entie th century,one from which dissidents and a narrow group of people belonging to


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such as Stakhanovites, Builders of Socialism, or self-sacrificing parti-sans. Although the Communist regime lasted for over 40 years, itun de rw en t chan ge. During its first 20 years^the period of Stalinismthe Communist Party and government literally foisted heroes on us.During its second 20 years, the period knov^m as "normalization" inCzechoslovakia, heroic m odels were entirely aba ndon ed. References tom oral values and any kind of brave assertion of perso nal opinions andideals we re regarded as a thre at to t he political regimes. Even the w arfilms of those years tended to focus on the doubts of the protagonistsand call into question death on the battlefield rather than glorify self-less heroism. The regime was clearly m aintained by the police, corrup-tion, and the party ma chine.

By then , slogans about "tam ing the vnnd and rain" or "agitatingfor a happy future" were forgotten. Officially, the situation was knownas "real socialism" "real" becau se even accord ing to th e official decla-rations of the party at that time, there was only one, really existingsocialism. At the com pulsory dem onstra tions of assent, w her e the partyand governm ent were exalted, none of the participants w ere expectedto display enthusiasm . These events aimed to force citizens to dem on-strate their conformity. That was sufficient. I recall one colleague atwork, a mem ber of the party, w ho was almost too fervent in his defenseof the policies of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and the SovietUnion, bo th in priv ate life and in fron t of his sup eriors. Some par ty offi-cials began to suspect he migh t be mentally disturbed.In January 1969, Charles University stud ent jan Palach bu rne dhimself to death in protest against the occupation. After his funeral,which li terally turned into a national demonstration, he was soonforgotten. Citizens adapted to the new regime and heroes like Palachwere an inconvenience. Censorship was strict and no further sacri-fice of that kind would have any impact on public opinion. Indeed,during the first years no one received any news about such heroism.Circumspection and pragmatism took precedence over ethics.


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in favor of a colleague thre ate ne d w ith th e sack or if they copied a textand passed it on for oth ers to read.

A kin d of parallel society cam e in to being , wh at Vaclav Bendatermed a "parallel polis," where matters such as courage and treach-ery could be discussed. The m oral codes th at t he citizens in oppositionsubscribed to were the international conventions on human rights,which were not officially published at that time, let alone publicized.Even heroism was on an intim ate scale. A courageous act was someonerefusing to testify or saying "almost nothing" at an interrogation. Butit was greatly appreciated! At th e end of th e 1970s, w hen a num be r ofpeople were jailed for signing the Charter 77 manifesto or lost theirlivelihood, it took courage to employ them or people like them, or torefuse dem ands from th e regional party co m m ittee for so-and-so to besacked, or to make it possible for "banned people" to publish underassumed nam es. Is tha t heroism? It certainly was then!

During a house search, the wife of the Protestant pastor janSimsa tried to hide a personal letter from the philosopher jan Patockaby putting it into the top of her blouse. W hen the secret police agentcarrying out the search wen t to reach for the letter, her husb and, thepastor, slapped h im in the face. For th at he w as sen t to jail for a year.Only people close to him and a few hundred dissidents knew the realreason for his sentence . We adm ired h im for it.

In those days heroism was the attempt to assert , at least inone's private life, values we regarded as right. But we were not ableto infiuence what the philosopher Milan Simecka called "Big History"(Simecka, 1985). Once more there were discussions in private aboutwhether, in her attempts to bury her brother Polynices, Antigone didno t actually complicate the lives of othe rs and wh eth er it was no m oreth an a "provocative" gesture. People were m anip ulated by indirect pres-sures, and indirect forms of coercion, such as barring their childrenfrom education, or preventing them from changing their apartmentor installing a telep hon e (Simecka, 1984). But these restrictions a re no t


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FOR US, HEROISM AND COURAGE WERE SIMPLY STICKING TO ONE'Sopinions and maintaining the values we believed were right. Heroism andcourage, as well as betrayal, were topics solely for private debate. And theywere discussed vwthout pathos but with great intensify. Those who did notconform to the regime could not make their views known through themedia, so they vwthdrew into the ir private lives. Even though such infor-mation could never reach the media then , people did learn about heroismof tha t sort. They were specific deeds, involving a small group . After all,censorship in those days was so pervasive tha t even invitations to gradua-tion o r formal balls had to be submitted to the censor for approval, lest theycontain some secret message. Even the wording of death announcem entshad to be chosen fixjm approved standard phrases.

It was also at the end of the 1970s that a debate was conductedamong the dissidents, or rather the democratic opposition, about thena ture of courage and bravery. And it was not confined to th e people ofCzechoslovakia b ut involved th e Poles too. It could well be th at VaclavHavel was actually prom pted by Adam Michnik to initiate this discus-sion about heroism and courage under "real socialism." At that timeHavel wrote his famous essay, "The Power of th e Powerless," and othe rauth ors wrote in response or in parallel texts tha t refiected th e views oncourage and bravery current at th e tim e (Havel, 1985). That debate gaverise to a wave of repression, including arrests and sackings, directedat those who had signed Charter 77 or expressed thei r dissent in someway (Simecka, 1984). Even some of the protagonists who made up thatresistance feared they might be needlessly jeopardizing their lovedones or other likem inded people and asked themselves, "Is it w orth it?""Heroic deeds are not appropriate to everyday life," leading dissidentand writer Ludvik Vaculik v^nrote at the time; "heroism is acceptablein exceptional situations, but these must not last too long." Heroismfrightened people, and it provided them w ith the excuse th at they werenot fitted for it and preferred constructive activify. The point was topreserve the n ation, no t to sacrifice it. Other contributors to th e debate


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Havel opposed those who expressed such antiheroic views insecret or sem ipublic deba te and indirectly repeated the o pinions he hadpublishedopenlyin the autumn of 1968, shortly after the WarsawPact invasion of Czechoslovakia. "On account of what will happentomo rrow w e ought n ot forget wh at will happen in twenfy years time."Many people are devoid of convictions, ideals, or opinions or fear fail-ure; they prefer to withdraw into themselves and not be an actor, oran active subject of history. So even wh en the y do not agree w ith tha twhich is occurring around them they simply accept the role of beingobjects of history. They defend this position on the grounds of "achiev-ing w ha t is possible," saving lives and enab ling th e majorify to survive.And as Havel had already w ritte n in Novem ber 1968, "I always realizethat no lives were saved, that the moral consistency of the nation wasdislocated for a long time, being racked by the reproach that it hadfailed to assert its will and stick by it to th e end."

At the root of th at d ebate on h eroism in the late 1970s and early1980s was the fear that the dissidents or supporters of the democraticopposition might find themselves in the position of paragons, heroesworthy of emulation, and thereby make things difficult for those who"could not afford" that sort of heroism. They did not want a situa-tion in which others were simply spectators of their courage, since itwould only alienate them. The actual activify of those dissidents/politi-cal opponents of the regime (here and in the other post-Communistcountries) derived from a profound and undisp uted conviction tha t th estances they adopted we re right. At the tim e mo st of th em did not havethe courage to doubt their views. Doubt would have und erm ined them .We did not want to hear any doubts in those days, in the same waythat Antigone did not want to hear the arguments of her uncle Creonw he n she tried to bury her bro ther. Creon (in jean Anouilh's version,at least) proves to his niece and daughter-in-law-to-be that her broth-ers PoljTiices and Eteocles were a pair of rogues and that it was notcertain that the stinking corpse outside the gate of Thebes was really


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Something similar applied to the people then in opposition, andbecause they were powerless they needed deep-seated convictions tobolster their identify. Those who are convinced they are in the rightcan be condemned to death without feeling threatened, or even guilfy.Individuals, groups even gene rations an d en tire cultural erassome-times pass through phases in which they require definite contours forthe ir ow n convictions. They need clear truth s th at th ey can relate to . Insuch phases it is fairly easy to be a hero and even have the courage tosacrifice oneself! Likevwse, th e ba nks of a river nea r its source are sha rpand clear-cut, where the water first creates a channel, and only whenth e river becomes a mighfy w atercourse in the lowlands can it mea nde rand its banks lose the ir clear contou rs.

Whether we like it or not, every social position, status, or rolecarries certain privileges. Then and now conformify ensures a socialstatus and prosperify, however relative. Then and also now noncon-formifyexpressed, for instance, in involvement in the undergroundcultural scene or in opposition political groups meant m inim um pros-perify b ut m axim um social autonomy and individual authenticify, w hichwo n the respect of oth er m em bers of tha t particular group. In tha t waythe individual also obtained social acceptance and admiration, whichcan be a source of satisfaction and even motivate heroism and courage.History is meaningless per se , bu t its subject can "confer" mean ing on it.And it could be tha t som ething similar applies to th e m eanin g of one'sown life, or to heroism at particu lar periods of history.SIMILAR DEBATES TOO K PLACE AM O NG TH E DISS IDE NT S IN H UN G AR Yand Poland. Looked at through the eyes of a diflFerent sociefysuch asthe West or today's younger generationthat kind of discussion andheroism appear incom prehensible. The bravery of those people had nomedia param eters. No one knew the m ; nobody from th e general public,let alone internationa l opinion, heard about their h eroism. It was no tpossible to publish those views, bu t "open letters" could be exchanged


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of com mu nication, but one that was app ropriate to our situation, albeitanachronistic in the last third of the twe ntieth century.

Non etheless, the discussion of courage and attitude s regard ing itwas similar am ong th e West European and Euro-American intellectualsand those "behind the Iron Curtain." At the end of the 1960s, opposi-tion to th e status q uo cam e into being in bo th pa rts of this civilization.In the West it centered on the "Frankfurt School" and movements forminorify rights and universal human rights, and it described itself asth e New Left (or th at was th e s om ew hat oversimplified label applied toit as an overall phenomenon). In central Europe, in the countries thatthen belonged to the Soviet bloc, an analogous generation sought toreform socialism a nd preserve it as an alternative to capitalism. In 1968th at atte m pt failed in Czechoslovakia a nd Poland alike. Those endeav-ors (as in Hungary after 1956) meant for many a loss of their formerlivelihoods, an end to their careers, emigration, and sometimes death.

The New Left in the West felt similar disen cha ntm ent at the impos-sibilify of im ple m en ting an ideal sociefy. M embers of th e New Left alsowanted to change sociefy and also failed. However, the "reformers" ofWestern capitalist sociefy had the opportunify to discuss their disillu-sion m ent and revise the ir views. I have not yet had th e ch ance to studyin detail the changes in postmodernism and my views are a refiectionof th e inform ation I have gleaned from various anthologies and th epress, bu t my feeling is tha t those w ho later leaned tow ard present-daypostm odernism emerged from thos e experiences. W estern intellectualsthus rid themselves of ideological commitments of all kinds, and alsofreed themselves from fanaticism, ideological dependence, and naivenotion s of unidirec tional p rogress.

But for decades those of us in Czechoslovakia, or in the other nowpost-Communist states, had no opportunify to keep track of that intellec-tual developm ent. We developed in isolation, albeit along parallel and, inmy view, similar lines. The attitude to he roism and courage in our coun-tries is likely to be similar to tha t in the West, bu t it will be based more on


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of separation from the phase of needing heroes was delayed by th e lack offt^edom here and it first started in the mid-1990s. It is sad, but not fragic.

The changes of 1989 ushered in a period in all the post-Comm unistcountries and the Soviet Union during which those who had rejectedmaintaining a consensus with the previous regime were revered andadm ired for a certain tim e. That "hou r of glory" was brief, however. Itsoon gave way to an actual aversion to those who had previously stoodout from th e crowd. Today, if someone wants to go into politics it is almostadvisable to deny one's dissident past. The point is that people find ithard to identify vnth the heroes of the resistance to the old regime. Forthe average citizen, and particularly for those w ho w ant to be success-ful, anyone wh o took an active part in the opposition is also a rem inde rthat it is possible to act and live with greater courage and less confor-mify. That's wh y VaclavHavel, Adam M ichnik, Andrei Sakharov and evenAleksandr Solzhenitsyn are hon ored and esteemed m ore abroad tha n inthe countries in which th ey were active. The former dissident "h eroes"are inhibited by the fear of being charged with elitism and m ost of the mare relu ctant to recall the ir past services (Siklova, 2003).

Frequent changes of regime relativize moralify. Social anomie isa state in which old values and customs no longer apply and ne w oneshave not yet been internalized. And tha t process of transform ation wasalso affected by our fragmentary knowledge of postmodern philosophy.In the West, postmodernism had been developing over two decades atleast. And then it fell into our m oral vacuum, und erm ining the certain-ties of those who had maintained certain moral stances and assertedthe m w ith courage. It also provided n ew ideological argu m ents for th osewho had no particular convictions or who had always conformed. Itprovided th em w ith an ideology that justified the ir previous behavior.

That superficial understanding of postmodernism also providesthem the opportunify to ridicule the recen t heroes of the 1989 revolutionsin the C omm unist countries, what T. G. Ash has called the "year of miracles"


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active oppon ent of the conservative elements in the political leadership ofthe day. He spent the next 20 years opposing the regime as a dissident, help-ing bring about its demise. It was a period that lasted 10 years longer tha nhis erstwhile parfy membership. Petr Pithart never changed his values,bu t the course of events has m ean t tha t we assess his com m itment at agiven mom ent differently. And h e likewise judges it difterently also. Nowhe is stigmatized for his former parfy m embership, w hile those w ho alwaysconformed score political goals against him.

One of these people recently told me that "I never got involvedin any thing bec ause I was scared to. Now I'm glad because I'm no tderided. I'm sorry for you dissidents. You've had no satisfaction, eith ermoral or economic. What properfy have you restituted? I pify you,because I reaped only benefit from your activify." That was one of thesincerest expressions of appreciation of those who had constituted thedem ocratic opposition and no w stand on th e sidelines. The conformistsw ho are no w involved in business or continue in politics are once m orebe tter oflfthan the former "heroes." The only consolation is th at b ut forAntigone no one would have ever vm tten about C reon.H ERO ISM IS EITH ER AN IN STA NT REACTIO N O N BEH ALF O F AN O TH ERh u m an be ing or a communifyon the basis, naturally, of internalizedvalues (since a psychopath never respond s to a call for h elp by len dinga hand)or a conscious long-term endeavor to achieve a specific goalthat is deemed important enough to be worth the sacrifice of othervalues, including one's life. Such an approach is virtually impossibleunless we are convinced that what we are asserting is truly right. Andw here such goals require courage o r even heroic actions, skepticism isan insurmountable obstacle. Whereas the skepticism among Westernintellectuals is conditioned by postmodern philosophy and interpreta-tion, in the post-Communist countries similar skepticism derives fromthe fact that high profile ideals are flouted in practice.To ask what heroism and courage (as well as betrayal, w ith w hich


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early as 1989, the Swiss philosopher and political scientist Hans MagnusEnsenzber^er wrote th at nowadays th e intellectual cannot simply criticizeand go against the stream , because the significance of deeds and decisions,as well as the flow of information, actions, and their interpretation, arechanging all th e t im e (Ensenzberger, 1989). "Flexibilify is gradirally beingelevated into a cardinal social virtue." Those who thin k tha t the only wayto confront "the system" is through frontal attack, whether conserva-tives or revolutionaries, are deluding themselves; this stance makes senseonly if one believes one knows th e m eaning of history. Events and deedsconstantly change th eir context. It is virtually impossible to go on holdingthe same opinion indefinitely. The subject has the right and dufy to adopta diflFerent evaluatory stance w hen viewed against his o r he r knowledge ofother facts and circumstances. The question as to w he ther one should swimwith the current or against it seems outm oded to Enzensberger because itcan only be asked at th e cost of major oversimplification. More natura l, inhis eyes, is to "wdndsurf throu gh the sea of opinions," going now w ith thewind, now against i t If an active individual is no t simply to conform, theanti-establishm ent nonconformifywhat the Czech vulgarly describe as"pissing into the wind"is not enough. Nonconformify can be a feshion-able and even nardssisfic stance if one fails to matc h one's deeds to one 'sconscience or internalized convictions. In my view, one can only speakin terms of courage if someone's proclaimed stance is not mere gratifica-tion of his or her ego, but instead is aimed at preserving and upholdingsupra-individual values and solidarify with the communify at large. Butthis takes m e away from postmodernism again.

It is not difficult to ridicule those ideals, whether from pragmaticmotives or on the grounds of postmodern philosophy. That this ridiculeis simply striking an attitud e is proved by the evident interest shown inheroes by viewers and readers in the West and elsewhere in Europe, even ifonly on the television screen. And tha t interest in some cases also extendsto the protagonists of events in countries where values are almost naivelyexp lidt, and skeptical attitudes to th e goals people fix do no t yet prevail.


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changes relativize the a ppraisal of actions, and traditions are not firm,w he n they are no t actually forgotten. In postm odern times we are there-fore obliged every day to decide repeatedly whe ther our actions are rightor no t. It is tiring. We suflFer from a d earth of un quest ion ed rituals.It is harder to define heroism in the post-Communist countriesthan it was under the old regime. We do not pretend to be familiarwith postmodernist philosophical slogans, but we have graduallycome to sim ilar conclusions on the basis of our exp erience. During theCom munist totalitarian regime it was dangerous to espouse or prom oteone's ow n views and ther e was an e lem ent of heroism in that. Today itis m uch m ore diflficult in the post-Com munist co untrie s to find reasonsfor courage and heroism than it was in the past. The old moral valuesno longer apply, the new ones are vague and based on a n overgeneral-ized definition of hu m an rights th at does no t correspond to the plural-ify of today 's world (Siklova, 2003). Nor have they yet to be internalized.Maybe we should not even pose the question about what courageand heroism consist of nowadays. That would b e very po stmod ern. Aculture based on such vague principles and values will scarcely standup to th ose w ho a re deeply convinced (as we were) that the y are in th eright and will espouse unrelativized values.

When refiecting on the less than rosy prospects of our Euro-American civilization, I am always comforted by the thoughts of theancient Roman philosopher Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius ("thelast Roman scholar"), who, imprisoned at the beginning of the sixthcentury, not only took leave of life, but also m ourned th e fact that Romanculture would not withstand the barbarians from th e no rth and th e civi-lized world would come to an end. But, surprise, surprise, the Huns,Gauls, and o ther barbarians have "improved" som ewh at, after all.

I am glad I grew up a nd lived at a tim e wh en A ntigone was m oreadmired than Creon. But I am so infiuenced by current changes andmy experience of life under com m unism tha t I can unde rstand Creon'spo int of view too. I can understand him, but I would no t like to em ulate


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REFERENCESAsh, Tim othy G ar ton. We the People: T he Revolution of 89 Witnessed in Warsaw,

Budapest, Berlin, and Prague. London: Penguin, 1990.Enzensberger, Hans Magnus. "Vermutungen uber die Tlirbulenz." Vor

der Jahrtausendwende. Ed. Peter Sloterdijk. Frankfurt am Main:Suhrkam p Verlag, 1989.

Havel, Vaclav. "The Power of the Powerless." The Power of the Powerless:Citizens against the State in Central-Eastern Europe. Ed. Joh n Keane.Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1985.

Siklova, Jifina. "The 'Gray Zone' and the Future of Dissent inCzechoslovakia." Social Research 57:2 (Summer 1990): 347-364.. "Everyday Democracy in the Czech Republic: Disappointments

or New Morals in a Time of Neo-Normalization." The Moral Fabricin Contemporary Societies. Eds. Grazyna Skapsa and Annamaria Orla-Bukowska. Interna tional Institute of Sociology. Leiden and Boston:Brill, 2003.

Simecka, Milan. The Restoration of Order: The Normalization of Czechoslovalda,1969-1976. London: Verso, 1984.. "0 velkych a malych dejinach." Kruhovd obrana. Milan Simecka.

Kohi: Index, 1985.


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courage heroism and the postmodern paradox

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