ole wæver 10 books - politik version

8/2/2019 Ole Wver 10 books - politik version

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Ole Wver : Autobibliography *

There is more to life than books, you know.

But not much more

Morrissey

In the train home after the meeting where the former editor of POLITIK, OleDahl Rasmussen, first mentioned the idea of 10x10, I could not help starting as I am sure, many readers of our 10x10 will do to scribble on the back ofan envelope: what would be my ten works? It seemed hard to get the listdown to ten there are many good books in the world.

To discipline my selection process, I have asked in a genealogical mode, as ahistory of the present How I became what I am. The question is not what Iwas impressed by, found great when I read it, or would like to suggest toothers. I have been looking from my present position for those books withoutwhich I am certain I would not be theorising, thinking and writing what I do.

Still, even after having decided on a criteria for selecting the ten books, a fewdifficult cases that all ended up outside the list for different reasons deserves

to be mentioned. This will both illustrate the consequences of the logic ofselection and allow me to cheat and sneak in a brief mention of books no. 11,12, etc.

Some might expect to see Carl Schmitt on my list (either Politische Theologieon the concept of sovereignty or Der Begriff des Politischen on friend/enemy).With a growing secondary literature discussing the relationship betweenSchmitts decisionism and the speech act conception of security in theCopenhagen School of security studies, it could almost be interesting whetherI actually formulated the concept of securitisation with Schmitt in mind.

Unfortunately, I do not remember. I was somewhat familiar with the generalargument, but as I recall, the original version of the speech act theory wasformulated in 1988 without any direct inspiration. I only read Schmitt in detaillater and found him very convincing, noticing naturally the similarities, aswell as the points where hopefully we part ways. Such reflections helpedto sharpen my understanding of what a performative view of politics implies,so Schmitt could have been included, but given the actual history and the

*As volume 4:7 in 2004, the journal POLITIK published a special issue 10x10, where 10 leading contemporary social

scientists present the 10 works that formed their own academic development the most. As then editor in chief, Iwroteto market the issue- my own piece, only published virtually athttp://www.tidsskriftetpolitik.dk/index.php?id=125
http://www.tidsskriftetpolitik.dk/index.php?id=125http://www.tidsskriftetpolitik.dk/index.php?id=125http://www.tidsskriftetpolitik.dk/index.php?id=125http://www.tidsskriftetpolitik.dk/index.php?id=125


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criterion of selection adopted, he does not fully deserve it. Several otherswere under consideration, too.

One was Hans J. Morgenthaus classic International Relations (IR) textbookPolitics Among Nations. In a marxianised political science department in theearly 1980s, where security affairs and realism were totally excluded, my firstrevolt was to seek up these works, and since bookstores in Copenhagen hadfew foreign books (and certainly not this one) this was my first order from aBritish bookstore. And the treasure fortunately turned out to becommensurate to its effect on the budget of a poor student: a hard coverbook with gold lined pages. And of course the detail that impressed me most:the reprint of a world map on the inner cover, suggesting here is the worldand the book about it. I struggled hard to get Cambridge University Press todo a similar thing with the recent Buzan/Wver book Regions and Powers, butthey placed the world on pages xxv-xxvi not the same thing! Since this featabout the map really is what has kept the book on my mind all these years, itprobably should not be among the chosen ten. I enjoyed reading it, but Icannot see any specific traces today, and I can thus blame my genealogicalcriterion for selection for not finding room for it.

Elias Canettis Masse und Macht(Crowds and Power) deserves to be listed and I am glad Chantal Mouffe did. In any case, I could not do it with honesty,because it really has not influenced me, although I wish it had. It is one of the

most remarkable books written on a social science subject, but it is sosystematically written up against all conventions for how to do social science it does not locate itself in relation to any disciplines, does not drawsystematically on any specific body of literature but only a wide and highlyidiosyncratic selection of readings, its method and line of argumentation ismysterious, and so forth. Accordingly, as it did not link up to any field, it wasnot received or integrated into any. Despite the Nobel prize in literature thatCanetti was awarded, this masterwork never became very influential. It is aunique source of provocation to read now and then but what to do about it?Canetti can be an illustration of the trouble of digging out what influenced you I will not claim it as influence, because that would be to say I had been ableto absorb it, and I have not. I have only been impressed, irritated, pushed,and at best vaguely inspired.

Another borderline case could be Richard Ashleys Statecraft as Mancraft,which surely did influence me greatly around 1990, when I started to work outthe possible ways to do IR inspired by post-structuralist philosophy. However,the book remains unpublished, so it would hardly be helpful for others to getthis reference, and I try to get around this with my trick on book no. 8. Thatone also covers Waltz - another problematic non-selection. It is a bit unfair

not to include either Man, the State and War(1959) or Theory of InternationalPolitics(1979), but Keohanes edited volume includes half of Waltzs 1979


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book. And Kalevi Holsti picked Theory, so again, I exploit my insiderknowledge of books covered by others.

Some ideas/influences came bit by bit, book by book, and therefore it isdifficult to pin down which one was really influential. This goes especially forthe so-called English School in IR. I read Hedley BullsAnarchical Societyfirst, and although it is a terrific book, I am personally more of a Wightian probably both in terms of style (the more paradoxical and un-stable, less thedeductive, systematic) and in terms of interest (more history and morepolitical theory, less measuring the state of contemporary institutions). ButMartin Wight I got to gradually in the wrong sequence from Power Politicsover the essays in Diplomatic Investigations and International Systems toInternational Theory. One important strand of the English School, the study ofdifferent historical international systems, culminated with Adam Watsons The

Evolution of International Society. This work provided crucial inspiration formy thinking about contemporary Europe as an empire (in the positive sense).However, I have previously clearly marked my debt, and written as aWatsonian, and those writings will have to do on that account. Similarly forPierre Hassner, who has been a bit of guru for me on European security, butfor decades he published no book, and I have written on his main non-bookrecently in a Festschrift.

So, if the 10 should actually be books, actually exist and their effects present

in todays me, they are the ones below.

1. Marx, Das Kapital

Karl Marx (1867-1894),

Das Kapital English translation (1957) as Capital, Foreign LanguagePublishing House, Moscow.

The 1970s was still going strong at the Department of Political Studies as Ienrolled in 1980 and throughout my five years as student, the maintheoretical map in student circles consisted of the competing neo-marxistschools. Today, this period is much maligned and it surely had its absurdities.For instance, it is today much easier to see the parallels between the Frenchstructuralists (Althusserians) and the German (in Denmark also Jutlandic)school of capital logic, whereas then they made up the extreme ends of apolarised spectrum. One thing they agreed on was The Book.

I think it is important that you early in your academic life take some theory orwork very seriously, and struggle hard with it. Not every text will do, but more

or less any of a certain complexity and reflexivity, preferably one thatintegrates meta-theory, theory and empirical work, and one that is self-


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reflexive about its relationship to traditions and disciplines. In my case, thechoice was not much of one Das Kapitalwas it.

Nor was it an innocent one. Clearly, my mode of thinking has been shaped bythis. I am inclined to think in terms of logics. Hayward Alker oncecommented that I have a strange way of using that term, and it struck mewhere it came from. It was a basic capital logic way of analysing, to assumethat reality is shaped by patterns, logics, dynamics. Not that a totality likethe actual society we live in today has one logic, but it is structuredto alarger or smaller extent by various such, and Marxs claim was that the logicof capital increasingly came to dominate. Despite all the talk of Marxism dyingwith the fall of the Soviet Union, it is as striking as ever in our current periodthat the market logic is subsuming ever new areas of life - take the universityworld as but one example. Such logics are neither explicable by

methodological individualism, nor through the most common conceptions ofstructure as typically located at one particular level of reality and somehowself-present; no, often the dynamics are morpho-genetic patterns that achievea dynamism of their own, shape units and system in turn, and thus should beseen as ontologically prior, not derivative from these.

A key element herein is the role of abstractions. Usually in discussions weblame the distance between neat categories and messy reality on the theory,but maybe we should rather blame reality. We talk as if we start from a reality

which is pure mess, and then we abstract all abstraction is imposition on ourbehalf. We then get the familiar discussions about the need to simplify versusthe need to respect complexity. As if abstractions come from us only, notfrom reality. Abstraction and realism are treated as opposites. However,abstractions are an important part of reality. Marx showed this compellingly in

Grundrisse and Das Kapital exchange value, the value form, is a powerfulabstraction which we practice all the time. Therefore, his theory was built bymaking this abstraction the starting point, and then adding complexity alongthe way. This Marxian procedure was explained well by Alfred Sohn Rethelthrough the term real abstraction.

Similarly, if we today live in a world which contains (in Jim Rosenausformulation) sovereignty bound as well as sovereignty free actors i.e.parts follow the logic of sovereignty, parts do not this is not an argument fordeclaring post-sovereignty and start from the resulting complexity only, butfor grasping well the logic of sovereignty as well as the emerging logics ofpost-sovereign practices. It is still very important whether you are born andhave citizens rights in Sudan or Sweden. Sovereignty will feel very real if youtry to push up against its walls here. This is not easy to explain from a generaltheory of, say, politics and authority without somehow entering the concept of

sovereignty, however modified and challenged. This is because sovereignty isa real abstraction.


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In terms of research strategy, the result is not too different from Karl Popperor Kenneth Waltz. Research has to have a creative element of first coming upwith an abstract idea and then unfold this in order to show its relevance in

relation to the empirical world, whereas it is not meaningful to work fromgeneralisations about observables. In the analysis of economic forms,moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force ofabstraction must replace both. (preface to Capital).

2. Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral

Friedrich Nietzsche 1887,

English translation by Walter Kaufmann, On the Genealogy of Morals, in: Basic

Writings of Nietzsche, Modern Library Classics, New York.

Nietzsche wanted it like that. Nobody should be left unaffected by readinghim. He thought of his own books as for instance in one case spooky andanother a disaster, he wanted to philosophise with a hammer and declaredI am no man, I am dynamite" (Ecce Homo).

And indeed, it is hard to be unchanged after reading for instance TheGenealogy of Morals. Not that each and every step is equally convincing, butthe whole perspective is revolutionary. Concepts we take for granted, evenbuild on and live by, are made contingent they are historicised andpoliticised when Nietzsche asks how and why they came about, got formedthat way, and not least whether they are actually good for us. At one level, itdoes not seem provocative or implausible to state that concepts and valuesare produced historically, only we will tend to exempt concepts like good andevil from this, and assume that they are innocently there for us to use.Therefore, reading Nietzsche has the radical effect of transferring this mode oflooking at concepts to whatever one it about to use as timeless subject orvalue.

In the most radical passages, the historically produced includes the ideas ofsubjectivity and objectivity. The subject is an effect of language, of our beliefin grammar. One of the main contributions of Foucault as Nietzsche-interpreter is to have worked out more systematically the implications ofworking with basis in neither subject, nor object, but seeing both as theproduct of discourse. However, Nietzsches main agenda is not methodologicalor actually historical, but the revaluation of all values as an attempt tocultivate the will to create new values. The original concepts of good and badwere with the noble people centred on good as the joy of great deeds, things

done with a triumphant yes to itself, only creating bad as a marginal after-thought. The slave morality shifts the distinction to good/evil, where good


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becomes derivative, the starting point negative the negative judgmentagainst nobility, strength and well-being. This points to the absolutely centralrole in the argument ofressentiment, a spirit of revenge, which drives a no tothe different and paradoxically. Nietzsche argues that the weak have been

historically successful and installed their values as generally acceptedstandards, whereby the powerful and creative are judged evil.

We are probably inclined today to meet his cultural criticism with deep-seatedambivalence. The celebration of aristocratic values (including the more martialones) will often even for those attracted to it give way to something closer toFukuyamas tepid salutation of decadence, democracy and de-heroisation. Onthe other hand, even this element in Nietzsches work remains an importantresource for those wanting to adopt a critical distance to modern life. Forinstance in relation to the concept of security, the most radical arguments

about why we might not want security at all, but something more interesting,typically draw their power from Nietzsche. To aim for self-preservationdisplays too much modesty and relativism, not enough will and risk-taking.

To choose one book for my list, I have deviated a bit from the principles andchosen the book that I think it makes most sense for others to start with.Nietzsche surely would have wanted Thus Spake Zarathustra on the list, thehighest and the deepest book (is not only the highest book there is, the bookthat is truly characterized by the air of the heights the whole fact of man

lies beneath it at a tremendous distance it is also the deepest, born out ofthe innermost wealth of truth, an inexhaustible well to which no pail descendswithout coming up again filled with gold and goodness; Ecce Homo), andindeed it is a artistically unique and one of the most powerful philosophicalexperiences one can undergo, but it would be pretentious to list it, becausefew could read it in isolation and make sense out of it. Similarly, Ecce Homoas Nietzsches late summary of his works, is of course an ideal text to pick,but as a condensate and with extreme formulations, it would be off-putting, ifone had not been hooked already through one of the more traditional works.The two connected books on morality, Beyond Good and Eviland On theGenealogy of Morals, convey both method and substance very clearly.Personally, I actually read all of the texts in a messy process of jumpingaround sometimes in Werke, not even clear which book I was in, sometimesbetween the different books translated into Danish.

Apart from the general impact of his arguments, Nietzsche has meant at leasttwo things to me. The first is in relation to the question of what a post-structuralist politics entails. The dominant strand within IR builds on an ethics(mostly from Levinas) emphasising the indebtedness to alterity and tending toimply an ethics of not doing violence in any respect to the Other, and

therefore questioning all strong projects. Strangely, this is often aligned with aNietzschean inspiration (from left post-Nietzscheans such as primarily Bill


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Connolly). The general post-structuralist political ethic becomes one ofopening up, freeing imagination and allowing new subjectivities to form. Toact politically, however, must involve taking responsibility for leaving animpact, for forcing things in one direction rather than another. Since there is

no way of guaranteeing in advance whether an act is good or bad, politicsdemand more will to power. It is not enough to have a meta-politics of amore democratic, open and inclusive society. In a specific situation, one mustact and run the risk that the effects of ones effects turn out bad. This entailsa courage to select - and say yes to oneself. Ironically, much of the ethics ofpost-structuralism wants too much guarantee, it is too security seeking in itsattempt to stay at the (meta-)politics that can be ethically justified, and isthus not Nietzschean enough.

The second is the fact that he provides a guide on How to survive in

academe. It is a particularly brutal world. Famously Henry Kissinger, whoknew both this world and the also pretty tough one of politics, remarked thatin the academic world, The fighting is so fierce because the stakes

are so low". But obviously, it also has to do with the difficulty of separatingproduct and person, wherefore criticism tends to be (taken) personally, andthe relationship between careers and theories. To get anything done, it isimportant not to get absorbed into fights and petty rivalries. Often when Ipulled a dagger from my back, Nietzsche was a direct source of inspiration inpicking a positive retaliation. At one level, much of Nietzsches writings is acombination of a kind of paradoxical ethics plus psychology and life strategy(the only valid criticism of a philosophy is to try whether you can live by it).After being alerted to the destructive logic ofressentiment, it becomes wise -as he puts it in Ecce Homo (p. 709 in The Basic Works) -to react as rarely aspossible, and to avoid situations and relationships that would condemn one tosuspend, as it were, ones freedom and initiative and to become a merereagent. So, almost at the level of American style how to and self-cultivationbooks, Nietzsche serves as a guide: do you want to honour the offender, byletting him rule your life and time and enter an unhealthy path of resentmentor do you own stuff? Has the will become its own redeemer and bringer ofjoy? Has it unlearned the spirit of revenge and all teeth-gnashing?

(Zarathustra).

I have been less good at listening to another aspect of the same advice on notreacting, that is when formulated in relation to books: read less, write more.Early in the morning, when day breaks, when all is fresh, in the dawn of one'sstrength - to read a book at such a time is simply depraved!(p.709 in TheBasic Works).


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3. Karup Pedersen, Udenrigsminister P. Munchs opfattelse af DanmarkstillingOle Karup Pedersen 1970,

Udenrigsminister P. Munchs opfattelse af Danmarks stilling i international

politik[Foreign Minister P. Munchs Conception of Denmarks Position inInternational Politics], Gad, Copenhagen.

Ole Karup Pedersen was my teacher, mentor (he probably didnt know) andmy predecessor as professor of international relations at the department. HisDr.Phil. thesis (Habilitation) from 1970 was often mentioned in thedepartment as a kind of reference point, a landmark, but it was not expectedthat students would ponder its 650 pages on Denmarks primary interwarforeign minister. Fortunately, I did, and found something much more radical

than expected from the way it was usually referred to.

The book explores the potential of organising a study around the conceptionsof international relations that statesmen articulate as part of their politicalpractice. Methodologically, this points to a study of statements made in officialcapacity and further of the processes involved when a conception is putforward and how it constrains and in other ways relate to specific politicalactions. The central analytical concept is the statesmens conceptions of thetotality or action theories, the understanding of international relationsimplied in their political statements. Although inspired by role theory and

decision-making analysis, Karup Pedersen was particularly conscious to steerfree of individual psychology. He took the full consequence and did not eventry to ask what P. Munch really thought deep inside, but what he found itopportune to state as his perception (p. 39, 615). The dissertation did not askbehind this to either what P. Munch really thought, nor to check it againstreality.

This led to an exchange at the defence that echoed in the journal Historie(History) afterwards. Sven Henningsen (Ole Karup Pedersens predecessor,the first professor of international relations in Copenhagen) found it hard to

believe that Karup Pedersen really thinks that we cannot reconstruct theperception held by actors. Karup Pedersens project had to be to recreate P.Munchs perception (picture of reality) in order to confront this with realityand register an eventual difference. In my view, Karup Pedersens analysiscan only be understood from this presupposition. How wrong he was.

To use the texts as a source to P. Munchs private perceptions would demanda non-existent psychological theory there can be no valid analysis ofindividual psyche on the basis of the available sources. Therefore, KarupPedersen elaborated a whole theoretical structure around the usefulness ofunderstanding the presented conceptions as important in their own right.


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Similarly, he does not believe in the fruitfulness of, nor employs, a concept ofobjective reality. The researchers objective reality would just be anotherconstruction of reality, and instead of treating some as subjective and othersas objective, we should see political reality as made up of many different

conceptions of reality. It is in the confrontations between these differentconceptions of reality that much politics takes place. What is exciting anddecisive is therefore to investigate how such conceptions emerge and getexplicitated, and how the confrontations take place.

What Ole Karup Pedersen reconstructed was the conception as a system in itsown right. It was not P. Munchs individual perception, and it was not just asummary of what he had said. It was the system in what was said. Ole KarupPedersen performed discourse analysis ahead of his time. Quite a lot of hismethodological reflections especially about the specific nature ofpoliticalspeech were more sophisticated than much of what has emerged in the recentbooming discourse literature.

Related to the way OKP operationally shifts from analysing an abstract stateinterest to the articulation of a proclaimed interest by a specific political actor,he also relativises the idea that the state as such has interests. This is neithera given fact, nor an impossible one. It is a political question, what (or who) isthe ultimate reference point for policy. Foreshadowing much of the literatureon referent objects of security state or individual and especially the

securitisation version of this theme, Ole Karup Pedersen shows empiricallyhow the right-wing parties saw Denmark, state and nation through the ages,as the referent object for security, whereas the centre-left government (ofwhich P. Munch was foreign minister) assumed that their responsibility was tothe living population of the country, not some eternal idea or identity (pp.423ff, 583). Ole Karup found that this real life political debate paralleled thatamong international relations theorists, where he drew a distinction betweenrealists like Morgenthau who operated with the national interest and had littlespecific thought about small states, and what he called the sociological schoolrepresented by Aron and Wolfers (pp. 591ff).

Although Karup Pedersen seems here to underestimate the extent to which P.Munch actually made reference to the nation as a collective that could survivein relative separation from state and specific individuals, he points to aquestion still under-explored in relation to both politics and theory: to whatextent state centric views assume that the state is the necessary road toindividual security or it is an aim in its own right.


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4. Kissinger, A World Restored

Henry A. Kissinger 1957,

A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problem of Peace, 1812-22, Houghton Mifflin, Boston.

Kissingers dissertation can be assigned importance in several ways - althoughin each case, one could surely get to the same insights by other channels, andthe choice of this book will therefore seem idiosyncratic to many who havedone well without it. For me it became one of the preferred instances ofclassical realism and of a conception of foreign policy, and since it is such anenjoyable read, it serves both purposes well, and I therefore continue to holdthe somewhat unusual view that this is one of the best IR books ever written.

The first kind of importance is as a key instance of classical realism. It is inthe nature of classical realism that it is appropriate to have it represented notby a programmatic statement, but practiced. Classical realism is first of all atradition of thought, a name for the accumulated wisdom of Europeanstatesmanship and philosophical reflections on it. Therefore, it gets a bit toosterile and static when presented as theory for instance by Morgenthau (inPolitics Among Nations) or George Liska. It is better to watch how it ispracticed in specific cases as by George Kennan or Kissinger (or Morgenthausvarious collections of essays).

A World Restoredcontains numerous quotable passages (often elegantbordering on the pathetic, but surely memorable). War is the impossibility ofpeace. Metternichs design was as simple as this proposition and ascomplicated (p. 67).

The statesman is therefore like one ofthe heroes in classical drama who hashad a vision of the future but cannot transmit it directly to his fellow-men andwho cannot validate its truth. Nations learn only by experience; they knowonly when it is too late to act. But statesmen must act as iftheir intuition was

already experience, as if their aspiration was truth (p. 329).

With this kind of philosophical reflection it becomes easier to see clearly thecontrast to the much more social science-like form that realism gets afterKenneth Waltz has neo-fied it.

The other level of the books importance is to put it paradoxically in relationto the first point its theory. Officially, the theory is presented in the sixpage introduction, and here the main concept is legitimate order, an

agreement among the great powers on the framework of international order.A legitimate order does not make conflicts impossible, but it limits their


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scope and notably Diplomacy in the classical sense, the adjustment ofdifferences through negotiation, is possible only in legitimate internationalorders. It is often discussed in the literature to what extent this can be seenas an instance of reasoning from domestic to international, that is: the

compatibility of the domestic orders as the key to international order, as in thedemocratic peace. In my view, this is a misreading of Kissinger, because thekey issue is a truly international one: whether the main powers can accept thebasic legitimizing principle on which the international order is built. Theimportance of this can be seen today, where the US and the lesser greatpowers disagree on this basic organising principle. This is not in a direct senseabout the compatibility of their domestic orders. However, it is so indirectly,which is exactly what makes Kissingers theory interesting. It is not as inthe democratic peace or Arons concept of homogeneity/heterogeneity aquestion about the domestic orders being or not being of a similar kind, but

the relationship enters because each power faces the challenge to linkinternational and domestic. The international principle can be perfect, oracceptable or disastrous for a specific national order as when a nationalorganising principle would undermine the multi-national Austrian empire,while the conservative ordering principle propagated by Austria in turn wasmore or less acceptable to all great powers. The question is thus perspectivaland relative, not logical and centralised.

This has to do with the other important way that the book is about thedomestic-international relationship: the nature of foreign policy and

statesmanship. The statesman is not seen as a representative of the domesticorder, as a kind of prolongation of the domestic into the international, but as aperson mediating the two spheres. It is not possible to pursue an internationalpolicy that denies a nations vision of itself, but on the other hand, whetherto modify a society or to change the international order is a purely pragmaticquestion, depending on which is most flexible. The hard challenge of thestatesman is to make the two compatible:

It may be asked why Metternich had to choose a procedure so indirect .Why not attempt to adapt the Austrian domestic structure to the national lansweeping across Europe? But a statesman must work with the material athand and the domestic structure of Austria was rigid, much more rigid,paradoxically, than the international one (p. 28)

In addition to the direct impact on my thinking that this book had as aninstance of classical realism and in offering central ideas for a foreign policytheory, it was the basis for one of the most enjoyable seminars I have taught,where it became clear how much students enjoyed reading just for once a textthat was good history in the dual sense of actually containing historical

information about early nineteenth century politics, and told a good story in adramatic and engaging way.


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Kissingers later writings and commentary on current affairs often fail to liveup to his own standards. Most strikingly, his harsh post-Cold War policies onRussia totally denied it any room for its vision of itself, and exactly this

deficiency in Western diplomacy contributed greatly to Russias shift awayfrom its originally more cooperative policy. A final reward of reading AWR istherefore to get a wonderful collection of quotes to use against not onlyKissingers foreign policy advice, but contemporary US foreign policy ingeneral. Such as this one: The most fundamental problem of politics () isnot the control of wickedness but the limitation of righteousness (p. 206).

5. Arendt, Men in Dark Times

Hannah Arendt 1968,

Men in Dark Times, Hartcourt, New York.

[Lessing] insisted that truth can exist only where () each man says notwhat just happens to occur to him at the moment, but what he deems truth.But such speech is virtually impossible in solitude; it belongs to an area inwhich there are many voices and where the announcement of what eachdeems truth both links and separates men, establishing in fact thosedistances between men which together comprise the world. Every truthoutside this area, no matter whether it brings men good or ill, is inhuman in

the literal sense of the word; but not because it might rouse men against oneanother and separate them. Quite the contrary, it is because it might havethat result that all men would suddenly unite in a single opinion, so that out ofmany opinions one would emerge, as though not men in their infinite pluralitybut man in the singular, one species and its exemplars, were to inhabit theearth.

Men in Dark Timesis a collection of essays on persons how they lived theirlives, how they moved in the world, and how they were affected by historicaltime (p. 7) concretely on Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Rosa Luxemburg,

Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, Karl Jaspers, Isak Dinesen, Hermann Broch, WalterBenjamin, Bertolt Brecht, Waldemar Gurian and Randall Jarrell.

Nobody would be well advised to read only Men in Dark Timesfrom Arendtsworks. To make sense of it, you need the code or general theory found inThe Human Condition (1958). Arendt in my view captures uniquely well anessential feature of politics. She starts from a distinction between labor, workand action. Labor corresponds to life itself, the biological processes of thehuman body, work to the production of artificial things (worldliness), and

action goes on between men and correspond to the human condition ofplurality. Plurality means that we are all the same, that is human, in such a


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way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who has ever lived, lives, orwill live. Therefore, every birth is a new beginning. The distinction betweenproduction and politics is crucial and often ignored. Because politics takesplace among people, in-between us, because power only emerges when

people act together, it basically consists ofaction whereby the individual cando great deeds and speak great words, but always directed to and dependenton the reaction of others, not doing thingsdirectly. History is not made in thesense that one actor has a plan and then carries it out. Politics is always moreuncontrolled action leads to other acting and so forth in chain reactions.

However, I list Men in Dark Times here, first because it was the book thatactually hit me so forcefully, and second, there is a happy correspondencebetween form and content here. The format of essays on persons brings outArendts ability to inter-act. As Arendt explains about Lessing, he did not give

priority to his own consistency the interaction with his readers was moreimportant. The perspectival truth involved in the interaction of politics isdifferent from abstract truth. Arendt practices this interaction herself in theessays.

The Lessing essay further spells out an important element more clearly than inThe Human Condition. Especially in dark times, there is a temptation toescape from it and move so closely together that the interspace disappears.This produces a warmth of human relationships, but this humanism often

known by pariah people comes at the high cost of any responsibility towardsthe world. This essay develops the difference between fraternity andfriendship and thus what it takes for a reaction during difficult times to stillcontribute to the world and to politics.

The essay on Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) develops the relationship betweenstory telling, life and politics, and in the essay on Broch she is notsurprisingly given the challenging nature of Brochs own theory pushed inrelation to her own thinking, especially in relation to ethical absolutes.

The importance to me of Arendts work is first of all in relation to the concept

of politics. It is a constant reminder, a check against that strange, ever-recurring tendency of political science to erase politics. Theories should neverexplain away that irreducible, open element that is the in-betweenness ofpolitics. Also, it is an argument in relation to academic-political self-reflection,cf. the comments above in relation to Nietzsche. It is not enough to work out

safe, progressive meta-positions politics demands the wager of action withsometimes unpredictable effects, and whether ones action was good or not,will be established only later by the story-teller. Finally, she offers a criticallight and holds up important standards for our political life.


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Her words from the preface, sounds even more relevant today: If it isfunction of the public realm to throw light on the affairs of men by providing aspace of appearances in which they can show in deed and word, for better andworse, who they are and what they can do, then darkness has come when this

light is extinguished by credibility gaps and invisible government, by speechthat does not disclose what is but sweeps it under the carpet, by exhortations,moral and otherwise, that, under the pretext of upholding old truths, degradeall truth to meaningless triviality. Let us hope that her continuation remainsrelevant as well, he conviction [t]hat even in the darkest of times we havethe right to expect come illumination, and that such illumination may wellcome less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, andoften weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, willkindle under almost any circumstances and shed over the time span that wasgiven them on earth.

6. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy

Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe 1985,

Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Democratic Politics, Verso,London.

Probably, post-structuralism would have found its way to the Department ofPolitical Science in Copenhagen one way or the other, sooner or much later. In

practice it happened around 1986 and clearly through Laclau and Mouffe. Thestudent community was still predominantly Marxist, and I personally workedmeta-theoretically from the scientific realism of Roy Bhaskar. Until then, I hadbeen sceptical when a few fellow students made the first attempts tointroduce a bit of Foucault or Derrida.

My (now) wife picked up Laclau and Mouffe in the local bookstore (because ofher interest in social movements and forms of democracy) and the bookstarted to find its way into seminars at the department. When she waslabouring over the infamous chapter 3 ofHegemony and Socialist Strategy,

she suggested that I read the book as well, so we could discuss it and I wasconsiderable more convinced than her by the general argument. This isprobably the one of my ten books where it is easiest to see an immediate andrevolutionary effect.

It seemed highly convincing to me that the key to understanding society andpolitics was competing meaning-assigning projects, that a single such projectnever achieves full dominance, and that their partial success is exactly howmeaning is produced and politics fought out. This solved a number ofproblems, not only for Marxist theory, but more importantly for achieving an

understanding of politics that kept in the power analysis, but neither reduced


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it to affairs of the state (or state theory), nor made it derivative of non-political spheres like the economy. The theory was much more respectful ofthe nature of politics than anything from mainstream political science orstandard Marxism with the important exception of Arendt (see above).

The first part (two first chapters) of the book constitute a genealogy of theconcept of hegemony, i.e. a critical re-reading of classical Marxism up toGramsci, but with the remarkable preface that they could have readsomething else and reached similar political conclusions. Since theynevertheless despite the contingency regarding choice of text do startfrom a reading, they implicitly assume that one cannot just observe societyand analyse it one has to engage with traditions of thought, theory works ontheory (as Althusser had tought). In the reading, they show how theindependent space for political action was continuously caught in contradictory

conceptions of freedom/necessity. It is not enough to declare determinedlythat there is no determination in the last instance by the economy, class oranything else, for how exactly should one understand the relationship betweenpolitical practices and society?

This leads into the dense chapter 3, which sets forth a general theory ofpolitics. A crucial move is to give up the idea that society is positively givenas a unity with inherent meaning. It is criss-crossed by competing practices ofarticulation, and there is therefore no essence of the social, it is not structured

by one logic that gives meaning to its whole and elements, and there is nohidden, ultimate, literal sense. Competing articulations construct differentsymbolic universes. Not only is a fully structured totalityimpossible, theelements too are unstable and incomplete identities, present in each other andmarked by more than one articulation. That each is not full, complete andclosed means that there is always a surplus of meaning, it is always possibleto re-articulate, and this is the condition of possibility of politics. Even whenone discourse (say, neo-liberalism) is very strong, and seems to structure thesocial through key concepts like individual freedom, economic necessity andinternational competitiveness, there will remain aspects of each concept dimensions of freedom, for instance not fully integrated into this oneproject, and there is room for competing political projects to articulate anotherpolitics. This openness of the social is constitutive they even call it thenegative essence of the existing.All social orders are precarious andultimately failed attempts to domesticate the field of differences. Theemphasis on partial fixations is a helpful formulation in contrast to otherimports of post-structuralism into the study of politics, where there is a riskof either (some Foucauldians) creating a too monolithic dominant discourseor (some Derrideans) depicting everything as floating and multi-vocal. Partialfixations allow for a mixture of structuralism and post-structuralism, which isquite productive, but obviously also continues to raise difficult meta-

theoretical questions.


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The book continues with the workings of antagonism, of equivalence anddifference, and of hegemony reconceptualised. Obviously much more shouldbe said about the later parts of the book, possible criticisms of the book, and

not least the further mostly separate work of Laclau and Mouffe. Butsticking to the power of the book, it was transformative in terms of provingthe power of post-structuralism and discourse analysis as political theory (andstrategy), thus enabling the grand transformation of the left within politicalscience from Marxism to post-structuralism.

The importance of Laclau and Mouffe for quite a lot of us at the time was dual.One effect was its general opening to post-structuralism, where it led onenaturally to read their main inspirations, Lacan, Foucault and Derrida of

which the latter clearly clicked best with me. The second importance kept thebook itself in play as the best proposal for how to analysepolitics from a post-structuralist basis, i.e. as a post-structuralist theory of politics as well as thepreliminary manual for discourse analysis.

7. Derrida, Writing and Difference

Jacques Derrida, 1978 (French original 1967)

Writing and Difference, Chicago University Press, Chicago.

Reading Derrida followed naturally from the eye-opening experience ofreading Laclau and Mouffe. Although not the ideal vacation literature on abeach in Greece, I was seized by ironically the consistency andconsequence of Derridas philosophy. Despite his own insistences that he hasno philosophy, no methodology, and no post-structuralism, and despite thecommon image of all post-structuralism and his in particular as playful,accidental and free-wheeling, I cannot help seeing in Derrida a strongphilosophical system. Having read the early texts from the late 1960s, there isa surprising predictability to the various later moves. This does not mean thatone could have made them without his later writings, which would imply that

the theory is mechanical as a machine (or that one is as smart as him), butthat the inner logic is quite clear and compelling, and the later writings(except for maybe the middle period around Glas) become forcefularguments (for instance about politics and ethics) that make so much senseout of important questions exactly because they draw from a set of basicmoves that are highly convincing, not to say hard to justify ignoring.

Already in On Grammatology, Derrida made the famous argument that theWestern philosophical tradition has privileged speech over writing. At one level

this is just one instance of many of the general pattern of deconstruction. Onetakes a crucial opposition, shows that really it is a hierarchy (because one side


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is privileged), and therefore one first reverses the opposition and then makesthe whole set slide by upsetting the basic distinction it rests on. At anotherlevel, this is a very specific opposition, because the revalued concept ofwriting becomes the general system of differences as such, Derridas

radicalised version of Saussures differential understanding of meaning.Speech in turn was privileged as an instance of the human longing forpresence, for simultaneous self-presence and presence of the object beingtogether in the moment of speech.

The implications of that argument is unfolded in Writing and Differenceschapter on structure, sign and play. From the system of generaliseddifferences meaning as a continuous process of reference from signifier tosignifier it becomes possible to observe the role in most discourses of sometranscendental signified God, Progress, Reason, Truth, History, Reality.

Usually, a text operates with some such instance that is kept out of thecontinuous play, the point where it ends something that simply is. But it isonly in the system of differences. No centre exists outside the text, but aconstant longing for one, and therefore typically textsproduceone. This wasthe moment when language invaded the universal problematic, the momentwhen, in the absence of a centre or origin, everything became discourse provided we can agree on this word that is to say, a system in which thecentral signified, the original or transcendental signified, is never absolutelypresent outside a system of differences. The absence of the transcendentalsignified extends the domain and the play of significations infinitely (p. 280).

Ironically, this argument by Jacques Derrida has become my owntranscendental signified. It is the most stable point in my own work. I havefound myself unable to counter Derridas argument at this point, so I take itas an obligation to be critical of my own practice in terms of installing suchinstances and I find it consistently revealing how texts are best understoodin terms of the often strange and indirect effects on them that stem from theoperations necessary to install a transcendental signified and repress itscontingency.

In my case, some of the most important areas where this general philosophywas worked out by Derrida was in relation to speech act theory and not leastin relation to discourse analysis. It points to the centrality of studying in atext, how it produces its own meaning, rather than relating it to a context,which is a doubtful concept because it tends to imply the traditional sender-receiver view of communication where an original meaning can be retrieved ifonly put in the proper context.

Therefore, it is better to draw on general semiotics and analyse the

valorisations and operations in the text that generates meaning, and


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especially how it tries to anchor itself in something stable (a transcendentalsignified), although this very stability has to be produced in and by the text.In my view, this approach to reading texts is often more helpful than the morecommon route to discourse analysis through Foucault.

8. Keohane (ed.), Neoralism and its Critics

Robert O. Keohane 1986,

Neorealism and its Critics, Columbia University Press, USA..

This item on the list is a cheat and in many respects unfair first of all toKenneth Waltz. Of course, his Theory of International Politics (1979) ought tohave been on the list, but four of its central chapters are reprinted here,

together with his important response to the critics. In addition, the bookcontains a number of key articles from debates on International Relationstheory in the mid-1980s. This collection therefore conveys the importance ofWaltzs text not only by way of the text itself, but simultaneously through thereactions that it engendered.

Theory of International Politics is probably the most influential IR text of thelast 50 years, and it is exactly its influentiality that makes it important for me,at least as much as the power of theory in its own right. One way to approachthe theory is to take it, use it, and this is surely to be recommended. Even if

one does not want to sign up as a neo-realist, it is a powerful theory thatteaches its users something about working with theory. But another receptionis to view it as a crucial moment in the history of the discipline. Waltzsstrategic moves are among the most powerful speech acts performed in thediscipline of International Relations. Waltzs 1979 book is a restatement ofrealism in new shape. By emphasising the demands of social science andespecially oftheory, and taking a systemic-structural approach, realism wasreformulated in a systematic and minimalist way, where previous broadspeculations were replaced by a precise argument. The resulting theory wastheoryto a previously unknown degree in IR, and this had impressive effects.

Not only realism was thoroughly transformed, also its long-term rival, liberalIR, was transfigured. Robert Keohanes counter-moves that created neo-liberal institutionalism are not comprehensible unless they are seen in relationto Waltz. Even the shape and direction of critical theories was to a largeextent influenced by the Waltzian move, because the mainstream came to bedefined by what I later termed the neo-neo synthesis (and the extremelynarrow neo-neo debate). The main dynamic axis shifted to the meta-theoretical one between rationalism and its critics (and because the hallmarkof the mainstream was its conception of science, the debate happened at thislevel). This had decisive impact on the radical, critical corner in two ways:

especially post-structuralism became much more central to the main map ofthe discipline (at least as the primary Otherof the mainstream during a crucial


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period) and the terms of debate became the nature of science. This helpedpost-structuralism by elevating it to a centrality that it kept denying, and itburdened it by an excessive focus on metatheory and epistemology.

Since Waltz, the discipline has been transformed in a number of ways,including the ubiquity of the demand to make a clear distinction betweenforeign policy theory (explaining the individual acts of specific states) andinternational relations theory (explaining the outcomes and patterns), to takerealism serious as the continuing main tradition (and not only as pastmistakes) and not least to think about ones theory as a deliberate constructto be optimised and evaluated as theory, and not by immediately jumping toassessments of the accuracy of this or that assumption judged by this or thatempirical example.

Neorealism and its Critics contains important articles by Keohane, Gilpin andCox that are all much cited, but for me especially the chapters by Ashley andRuggie belong in the top-ten collection (having written an article on theoeuvre of each .). In the first generation of post-structuralist IR, RichardAshley and Rob Walker were key figures. Walkers main contributions fromthis first period culminated in a widely read 1993 book, but Ashleys workremains dispersed in a number of important articles, of which this is one ofthe first. Thus, to enlist Ashley within the ten volumes, his article on ThePoverty of Neorealism is a reasonable choice (although his 1997 article in

Alternatives is a more full-blown statement of his post-structuralist take onIR).

Ruggies article (originally published in 1983) opened for a systematicdiscussion ofcontinuity and transformation in the World Polity. With theradical changes that took place, especially in Europe with the end of the ColdWar and the rejuvenation of European integration, and increasingly moregenerally in relation to globalisation, a discussion erupted over change in theinternational system. Was it possible to pin down a level at which organisingprinciple was changing? Ruggie pointed to the importance of sovereignty (and

private property) as a specific way of specifying and differentiating units, andthus within the general assumption of international relations as anarchic, weshould watch the specifications following from the kindof anarchic system welived in due to its organisation around the modern sovereign state. Ruggiecompared this to the medieval system, but soon followed a discussion aboutpost-modern possibilities, among which neo-medievalism was an obviousinstance. Ruggies article (and a later 1993 follow-up) addressed theextremely tricky question ofhowto assess whether somehow one organisinglogic is giving way to or at least being paralleled by another. Change atthis level happens not by a frontal confrontation on the terms of the old, but

rather through lateral change, where a new logic emerges in the cracks ofthe old, the importance of which only becomes clear later. Thus, at the time of


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transition, it is possible to tell stories in the different languages, but not easyto measure them up against each other. Change can therefore not bemeasured in relation to sovereignty, the way it is often done, that is in termsof developments that transcend or violate sovereignty, because that is to

assume that sovereignty is a descriptive term, where actually it is agenerative principle. Also, it is a powerful abstraction which brings us back tothe issues from Marx about what abstractions key actors actually live by, andfrom what abstraction we can generate coherent stories that match up withwhat we want to grasp.

The importance of Waltz and the chain-effects on more or less the wholediscipline of International Relations is of general validity and can be generallyestablished as convincing disciplinary history. The strong emphasis on thewhole constellation in the mid-1980s is more idiosyncratic (including the

importance of Ruggie and the question of organising principles). They belongmore distinctly to my own intellectual history. We each tend to lock in withparticular periods. For me, it is clearly the early and mid 1980s, where thepatterns of IR-fronts (and my taste in music) became the continuousreference point for interpreting later developments.

9. Buzan, People, States and Fear

Barry Buzan 1983 (2nd ed. 1991),

People, States and Fear: The National Security Problem in InternationalRelations, Longman, UK.

Very few Europeans who had security studies as primary research field duringthe 1980s or 1990s would be able to come up with a top ten that did notinclude People, States and Fear. Buzans 1983 book raised the field to a wholenew level. It showed that it was possible to take the concept of securityserious and use it as analytical perspective on a large part of internationalrelations subjects. He managed to organise general IR theory around it. Thebook contains a surprising amount of the ideas that became central for the

coming decade: The different sectors military, political, economic,environmental and societal and the levels of individual, state andinternational; the security dilemma and the defense dilemma; the usefulnessof viewing IR in terms of two main sub-fields, security studies andinternational political economy (which Buzan brought out by thinking thesecurity problem in relation to the international political and internationaleconomic systems); and the relative values of a national and an internationalsecurity strategy.

Even the idea much better unfolded later of regional security complexes is

found here, as is mature anarchy. The latter was probably the main reason


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why Buzan later realised he had in some respects reinvented the EnglishSchool in new terms, which led him to return to work on the original version,and produce very important theoretical work in that context (notably the 2004book From International to World Society?).

Also, Buzans book became influential because of the question of how to thinkabout concepts. He argued that security is an essentially contested concept(with a term coined by Gallie): it is so politicised that one cannot possiblyagree on a definition and leave disagreements for later. An important part ofpolitics is carried out through the struggle over how to understand keyconcepts like democracy, equality and security. Buzans book showed that thisnot a route to agnosticism and demobilisation, but the study of an essentiallycontested concept could become immensely influential, not only in criticalcircles, but certainly also in mainstream strategic studies and even policy

circles. Also in other respects, Buzan demonstrated that it is possible toovercome a very polarised debate. For instance, he viewed the state as bothprotector of and threats to individuals, at a time when most mainstreamrealist IR and peace research would only insist on seeing only one side of thispicture.

For me personally, the book acquired special importance for several reasons.First, I used it as foil for formulating and focusing the previous years inchoatethoughts on the concept of security in the shape of a criticism of the book,

primarily for an unsustainable idea(l) of striking the right balance betweenindividual, global and national security. I insisted that much of the debate onindividual and global security is about howto understand national security,and if it is argued that a policy that takes individual and global dynamics intoaccount produces better national security, this is not a case of giving lesspriority to national security, only of achieving it a better way (I would todayaccept that security exists as such at all levels, but still the main task is not tochose or balance between the levels but to understand how they areconnected, different ways for state security to produce individual security andinsecurity, etc.). This critique led to a productive discussion with Barry Buzanthat has continued since then, including a handful of co-authored books. Thisco-operation has been all-decisive for my own academic career, so the bookwould be obligatory on my list for purely circumstantial reasons, but re-reading it, I am reminded that the book itself fully deserves this it is actuallyimpressive how much of the discipline in manages to reflect through securityas a crystal.


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10. Milosz, New and Collected Poems : 1931-2001

Czeslaw Milosz, 2003

New and Collected Poems : 1931-2001, Allen Lane, London.

To exist on the earth is beyond any power to name.

One important reason for listing Milosz is that one constantly underestimatedfactor in the way international politics is understood (by reference to thehistory of ideas and competing philosophies) is the power and complexities ofromanticism. Much liberal, enlightenment-inspired theory thinks it hasdistanced itself from romanticism, but it neither sees its own dreams of unity,harmony and meaning, nor has a relevant vocabulary for more outrightromantic phenomena, such as nationalism. Critical approaches can

deconstruct all such theories as attempts to install meaning in still moremysterious and indirect ways; but what is the meaning hereof? One thing is tounmask the naivety of romantic dreams of harmony, identity and homecoming(or homelessness), equally important is to recognise the unrelenting powerand necessity of these aspirations which we could hardly live meaningfullywithout. This is the kind of tension that makes it particularly rewarding to readIsaiah Berlins writings on nationalism, Pierre Hassners security analysis andMiloszs poetry.

Probably it is an unavoidable heritage for someone writing in Polish to relateto romanticism even if in contradictory ways. In Miloszs case this often takesthe form of praise of earthly, daily experiences and attempts to fit them into auniversalism. Since my youth I have tried to capture in words a reality suchas I contemplated walking the streets of a human city and I have neversucceeded; that is why each of my poems seems to me the token of anunaccomplished oeuvre. I learned early that language does not adhere towhat we really are, that we move in a big make-believe which is maintainedby books and pages of newsprint. And every one of my efforts to saysomething real ended the same way, by my being driven back to theenclosure of form, as if I were a sheep straying from the flock.

And is it not always the case that we tend to long for not only reason butmeaning? That we assume that things come together in meaningful patterns?That we hope that reality can be contained - maybe not expressed, but almostgrasped? Even those who attack one form of harmony, reason or scheme tendto dream of some other kind of unity with an inner meaning, which they trysomehow to connect to. To find my home in one sentence, concise, as ifhammered in metal. Not to enchant anybody. Not to earn a lasting name inposterity. An unnamed need for order, for rhytm, for form, which three words

are opposed to chaos and nothingness. (Unattainable Earth, p. 141). (Seealso the poem Meaning, p. 569, too long to quote here).


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To a Finnish newspaper, Milosz said in 1993 It feels like I have my whole lifebeen striving after something, which it is impossible to reach. And heappropriately named his 1986 collection Unattainable Earth (probably my

favourite collection in its unusual form. Here, Milosz breaks from theconvention of a poet gathering poems from a few years to make up a volume,and instead includes poems by others, notes in prose, various quotations andfragments of letters from friends, because they are all part of the samestriving and tone as he lived during a specific period, and they all serve onepurpose: my attempt to approach the inexpressible sense of being; preface).

Milosz believed strongly in the task of poetry, the responsibility of the poet,which made him sceptical of excessively avant-garde writing. His own style is

often simultaneously plain-spoken and elevated and as it was said in thepresentation speech in 1980 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize, his style isboth analytic, intellectual and sensous. One might add quite a bit of humourand self-irony.

What is this enigmatic impulse that does not allow one to settle down in theachieved, the finished? I think it is a quest for reality, he said in his NobelLecture. This points us back to the role of ideals and aspirations ininternational affairs. In the discipline of IR, there is a tendency to assume thatideals count on the good side to be discussed as part of the solution,

whereas the darker logics are driven by cynical, ideal-free actors of powerpolitics. Often the opposite is the case. One of the few InternationalRelationists to argue this, however, did it very forcefully; Morgenthau inScientific Man vs Power Politics (1946). If all actors were driven only by a wishto handle relations and make reasonable, practical arrangements, maybe themore optimistic, rationalistic, liberal theories could work, but men rarely leaveit at that politics is regularly infused by visions and ideals. Humans aremoral beings. Their relations can therefore only be understood, if thistranscendental dimension is included, which the rationalistic schemes do notallow for.

For a planneddoctoral (i.e. Habilitation) dissertation, which I almostcompleted around 1997, I wanted to use one of his poems as motto, and toget permission I tried to build up the courage to write Milosz, or maybe evenvisit him, when I lived in his new home town Berkeley. The poem was

Preparation:

Still one more year of preparation.Tomorrow at the latest, Ill start working on a great bookI which my century will appear as it really was.The sun will rise over the righteous and the wicked.


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Springs and autumns will unerringly return,In a wet thicket a thrush will build his nest lined with clayAnd foxes will learn their foxy natures.

And that will be the subject, with addenda. Thus: armiesRunning across frozen plains, shouting a curseIn a many-voiced chorus; the cannon of a tankGrowing immense at the corner of a street; the ride at dusk.Into a camp with watchtowers and barbed wire.

No, it wont happen tomorrow. In five or ten years.I still think too much about the mothersAnd ask what is man born of woman.He curls himself up and protects his head

While he is kicked by heavy boots; on fire and running,He burns with bright flame; a bulldozer sweeps him into a clay pit.Her child. Embracing a teddy bear. Conceived in ecstasy.

I havent learned yet to speak as I should, calmly.

Unfortunately, I prepared for too long for this approach, and Milosz died in2004.

A final reason for listing Milosz here relates to the subject that interests memost at the moment: religion. Especially in his later poems, as he continuedto wonder about his strange fate of becoming old enough to almost parallelthe whole 20th Century, he returned not only to Poland, but also to thequestion of his relationship to religion. Take Helenes Religion:

On Sunday, I go to church and pray with all the others.Who am I to think I am different?Enough that I dont listen to what the priests blabber in their sermons.Otherwise, I would have to concede that I reject common sense.

I have tried to be a faithful daughter of my Roman Catholic Church.I recite the Our Father, the Credo and Hail MaryAgainst my abominable unbelief.Its not up to me to know anything about Heaven or Hell.But in this world there is too much ugliness and horror.So there must be, somewhere, goodness and truth.And that means somewhere God must be.

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