In praise of UNESCO

[imomus]

I'm not sure what you've done this past week, but it's probably not much in the grand scheme of things. This is because, like me, you're just a puny individual rather than, say, an international educational, scientific and cultural organization with an impressively stylish Cold War headquarters in Paris presided over by a Japanese diplomat.



I was lucky enough to get a guided tour of the UNESCO building a couple of years ago from my friend Akane, who works there. Later Star Forever Karin Komoto tried to get a job there, abandoning her lucrative career with a top-flight accountancy firm. It seems to be a bit of a Japanese niche, a dream. "I'll go to Paris and I'll work for UNESCO." My Japanese friends certainly feel strongly about its benign aim to protect precious sites and aid international peace and harmony through education.

Watching a documentary about the painter Balthus yesterday, I was impressed by the poise of his wife Setsuko, and wondered what she'd been up to since his death in 2001. So I googled her, and discovered that the Countess Setsuko Klossowska de Rola, as she's formally known, is now doing a lot of UNESCO work. She's helping children, promoting cultural exchange, and being their Artist for Peace. And peace is really what you feel when you sit in the Tadao Ando-designed Peace Chapel at the UNESCO headquarters.

Whatever you've done this week, it's a drop in the ocean compared to what UNESCO has done. It's hosted an "Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention" in New Delhi to safeguard and regenerate oral traditions, belief systems, folklore, traditional knowledge systems and art forms. It's debating whether Langkawi in Malaysia should become a Unesco geopark. It's funding community radio stations in India's tribal belts and giving the marginalised weaver communities of Chanderi in Madhya Pradesh a community multimedia centre. It's declared ten Nigerian artists "living human treasures". It's formed an "innovative teachers forum" with Microsoft. It's praised the United Arab Emirates' commitment to protecting its heritage. It's expressed concern over rapidly expanding tourism to Machu Picchu, where a new bridge threatens the famous Peruvian ruins. It's awarded the Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize postuhmously to Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist and human rights campaigner who was killed last October. It's holding a meeting in Iran to discuss whether the Sivand Dam in Bolaghi Gorge threatens the nearby Pasargadae World Heritage site. It's called for the release of a BBC journalist abducted in the Gaza Strip three weeks ago, deploring the proliferation of hostage-taking involving media professionals.



I must say, I'm impressed by UNESCO's attempts to be a sort of global good fairy. I'm not kidding, it's wonderful. Although some have been quick to declare the UN a toothless propaganda stooge, a pretty Picasso dove fluttering a few moral metres above the jets and weapons of Anglo-Hegemony World, UNESCO often turns out to be the best stick to beat Angrael with -- the line it sets for others, then fails to reach itself.

On March 26th I built on the conclusions of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions to endorse, with UNESCO, a "point to point" model of culture which would counterbalance the emerging imperial model of an Anglo-dominated "hub and spoke" world. It's precisely the Anglo "hub" which is currently posing the biggest threat to exactly the sort of diversity UNESCO exists to champion.

And although UNESCO was founded in 1945 by the Anglo victors of World War II to “build peace in the minds of men” (its constitution states that “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed”), the organization pissed Britain and America off royally when the nations swung rightwards in the 1980s.

Whereas Thatcher and Reagan were redefining "freedom" as capitalism and "freedom of the press" as the right of moguls like Rupert Murdoch to say what they liked, UNESCO's MacBride Report saw freedom as democratization of the media and egalitarian access to information. Quite different -- the opposite, in fact. In 1984 and 1985 first Reagan and then Thatcher withdrew from "communist" UNESCO and stopped paying their membership fees. Singapore ("Disneyland with the death penalty", as William Gibson called it) followed suit. Britain only rejoined in 1997, and the US in 2003. Singapore still hasn't rejoined.

My only reservation is this. UNESCO does things like adopt "The Seville Statement on Violence", a 1989 policy document which refutes the notion that humans are somehow biologically predisposed to organised violence. It makes Countess Setsuko Klossowska de Rola an "Artist for Peace". Yet I'm unable to find any of Setsuko's paintings online. What I find is her husband's work, which is rooted in his reading of the Marquis de Sade and Bataille and made up of "images charged with eroticism and barely contained violence", as it says on the video box of the film I just rented about him. In the documentary, Balthus himself attributes the latent violence in his paintings to Scottish ancestors (entirely fictitious ones, it turns out), whom he describes as a particularly bloodthirsty clan of Celts.

Now, is this contrast between violence and peace a contradiction -- a choice to believe Balthus or his widow about human nature, but not both -- or a dialectic whose contradictions we should accept? Violence and peace, husband and wife, eroticism and menace, young and old -- they can co-exist. Nobody is being a hypocrite just because this dialectic doesn't resolve. The useful dove we call UNESCO was, after all, born at the end of a war; its idealistic paperwork wafted in on the hot white breeze of two nuclear explosions. No wonder its halls throng with Japanese.

Comments

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"The Seville Statement on Violence", a 1989 policy document which refutes the notion that humans are somehow biologically predisposed to organised violence.

I don’t think humans are "biologically predisposed" for organized violence, its more a case of conflict being a natural part of human life at some level, and when groups of people hold conflicting ideologies that threaten each other, war is an inevitable consequence... stopping war means stopping conflict, and stopping conflict means suppressing the ability to act upon disagreement. You can't do that without a worldwide dictatorship.

Would the "evil" of a dictatorship be worth the peace it would bring? Nearly everyone agrees the British Empire was an oppressive institution, but it's played a big part in making English the de facto universal language of the world, and that has broken down many cultural barriers and helped the world to talk to each other. If the British hadn’t gone around "stealing” land, English wouldn't be this globally unifying thing.

Paradoxically, Maybe a giant war would be the only way to gain peace. A giant war that forced cultural homogeneity on the world... a homogeneity that the people it was forced upon would despise, but a homogeneity that would unite the descendants of those people.

In any case, UNESCO’s fluffy ideas related to peace sound like simplistic bullshit that would never work in practice. Like communism...

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

Maybe a giant war would be the only way to gain peace.

I think there are some openings in the Bush Administration. Check the want ads.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Hm, I don't want war, I just don't believe peace is a possibility in today's world, or any world where uniformity isn't forced upon the masses.

Im happy to embrace the duality of it all. Then again, I would say that, because war's only something I read about in the papers and see on the TV. War doesn't happen to the rich, white, English speaking world. We get tiny glimpses of the terror of war (ie. 9/11) and act like the world is falling apart because of one bomb on western soil, yet we're happy to sit by and watch other countries live with that sort of thing every hour of every day, sometimes directly because of western meddling.

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

It's true we, wealthy westerners, aren't asked to sacrifice for the war effort. No gass rationing or the like. It's easy to ignore the war. That's one reason why some think there should be a draft.

Pivatised war is frightening.

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

In any case, UNESCO’s fluffy ideas related to peace sound like simplistic bullshit that would never work in practice. Like communism...

Indeed. Ethnic costumes and pretty paper statements are all any UN agency cares about. The US pays a LOT of money to UNESCO...money better spent on ruining the lives and property of people that would do harm to not only innocent people, but also priceless works of cultural and artistic significance.

[hairparty.livejournal.com]

i got arrested by the parisian police for hopping the fence and skateboarding on the unesco building.
their security there is in-saaaaaane.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I've been musing inadequately (http://my.opera.com/quentinscrisp/blog/2007/03/26/durham-light-infantry) on war and peace, recently. Just struck me as an overlap of themes.

Strawdogs

[payoption07.livejournal.com]

In the documentary, Balthus himself attributes the latent violence in his paintings to Scottish ancestors (entirely fictitious ones, it turns out), whom he describes as a particularly bloodthirsty clan of Celts.

A gross generalization but Hadrian's wall speaks for itself!

The addiction to display self righteous behaviour covers up a lot of sin!
As group activity it could be lethal!
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Academy/1912/strawdogs.html

Re: Strawdogs

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

The lowland Scots (raises hand) were the worst of the lot, having lived nearly six centuries on a veritable battleground before shipping off to Northern Ireland and thence to the American frontier. During the course of some inter-clan conflicts, skins of the enemy were hung on cottage doors.

And then there's the matter of William Wallace fashioning a belt from the skin of an enemy...

[bricology.livejournal.com]

Of course, Balthus wasn't really a Count, so the Widow Klossowski isn't a Countess. But then Balthus wasn't a Modernist either, despite having painted all his life within the "Modernist" era.

Having said that, I have no problem with people calling themselves whatever they like, whether it's Momus or Lord Whimsy or Duke Ellington. Identities are what we make them, and perhaps it's the same with UNESCO. Fluffy-Hippy on the outside, stainless steel multinational on the inside. Audrey Hepburn's face and Julian Huxley's brain.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Balthus was certainly an unusual Modernist. No rectangles, Cubism or abstraction for him! But the thing he was close to was Surrealism, Pittura Metafisica (Giorgio de Chirico), and the literary Modernism of friends like Georges Bataille and the Acephales group. He does fit his era.

[hulegu.livejournal.com]

I recently finished Nicholas Fox Weber's wonderful biography of Balthus. I have to admit I picked it up not because I knew much about Balthus' art but because he seemed such a fascinating character. His mother was the lover of Rilke, for example. Appropriately for this post about preserving (actually conserving) cultural heritage, Balthus was director of the French Academy in Rome at the Villa Medicie and helped revive this once moribund institution. Artistically, I understand that Piero della Francesca was his greatest influence

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes! Amazing, that David Bowie, in 1994 interviewed a man who knew Rilke and Bataille and other heroes of mine from what I think of as quite a different time. The interview -- for Modern Painters -- ran to 12,000 words and Bowie said "I was terrified" (http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/ios95.html).

[(Anonymous)]

just thought you might like to know Nick, since you did this just yesterday to someone else when they least expected it:
www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=nick+currie&word2=fashion+flesh
Sorry...life is fair. haha
love,
John FF

[(Anonymous)]

perhaps more fascinating still, you beat you?!
http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=nick+currie&word2=momus

[lupoleboucher.livejournal.com]

UNESCO is the main functioning part of the UN, period.

For what it is worth, I think it is an utterly anglo institution. As far as I can tell, only limeys are interested in preserving delicate cultures, like victorian butterfly collections. It's not like you see a lot of chinese people agitating to preserve Hui, Tibetan or Burmese culture, let alone Uighur or Yanomani culture. Germans have taken up such fetishes recently after having the stuffings kicked out of them by the english, but I always thought of them as East Saxons anyway. I also am completely convinced that humanity is fundamentally violent. We're just apes after all. Apes are violent too. Even Bonobos.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

"Man, am I horny!"

--a Bonobo chimp, overheard yesterday on the corner of 10th and First Ave.

I have a book on the Aurelian Society if you'd like to borow it.

[(Anonymous)]

"I'm not sure what you've done this past week, but it's probably not much in the grand scheme of things. This is because, like me, you're just a puny
individual...Whatever you've done this week, it's a drop in the ocean compared to what UNESCO has done"

That's understandable coming from someone who's admittedly spent part of the past week at a sauna, or engaged in various sense gratifications. I can see how someone might consider such a life to be "puny" in comparison to most else. But speak for yourself.

In the past week, among other things, I've cleared away weeds from atop my brother-in-law's grave in Japan, cleaning and restoring it to a more
dignified condition. You'll forgive me if I refuse to consider this, or other kinds of small gestures, as amounting to "not much in the grand scheme
of things" or merely "a drop in the ocean" simply because the impact is not on the scale of a cultural agency of the U.N. (one from which I'm willing
to admit a measure of positive effect does come, by the way). What's needed is less of these totalizing and ("United") facilitators of "goodwill" (yes,
yes, I know they mean well) and more localized, non-hierarchical (not to mention non-bureaucratic) active personal engagement, man!

Michael

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Clearly I'm not denigrating what you did at your brother-in-law's grave. I'm not even denigrating my own sauna visits. But I wanted to make a pretty strong statement of what UNESCO achieves in a single week, because I knew there'd be scoffers.

You know, I looked at two maps yesterday, one represented nations by their internet use, the other by their population. On the internet map, America and Britain and Germany were huge. Africa didn't exist. On the population map it was India and China that dominated. Africa was big.

For whatever reason, the internet is full of people who denigrate the sort of cultural diversity UNESCO stands for. Opinion on the internet is dominated by English-speakers who don't accept the idea that their culture constitutes a sort of empire that must be struggled against for local identity to emerge, and think that cultural organizations run by governments to ensure diversity, the survival of languages, press democracy, accessibility, peace and so on are inherently dubious. They also tend to agree with the idea that humans are inherently violent.

I think the idea of UNESCO as a truly international organization (it has 191 member states), but also one rather Franco-Japanese in character (in its attitudes towards culture) is interesting. But it's hard to make a case for a Franco-Japanese attitude to culture -- or a government-run body which exists to support it -- for a largely American audience.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

Interesting use of the phrase 'Franco-Japanese'. I was just agreeing with someone the other day that French and Japanese literature is/are the most interesting in the world. I wonder why that might be?

[(Anonymous)]

What (contemporary) Japanese literature is it that you find interesting?
Certainly not the vacuous Murakami Haruki, I hope?

Jan

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

Well, I didn't use the word contemporary, largely because I'm not well up on contemporary Japanese literature, though people have given me some recent Akutagawa Prize winners to digest at some point.

I mention Murakami here, under question 7:

http://swiftywriting.blogspot.com/2007/02/interview-with-quentin-s-crisp.html

I also mention other Japanese writers throughout.

As I say in the interview, I haven't really read enough of Murakami to judge, but I must say I don't have a favourable impression of him.

Japanese writers I like include: Nagai Kafu, Mishima Yukio, Dazai Osamu, Higuchi Ichiyo, Koda Rohan, Izumi Kyoka, Natsume Soseki, Kamo no Chomei, Okakura Tenshin, Hagiwara Sakutaro and Tanizaki Jun'ichiro.

As you can see most of these are Kindai (rather than Gendai or Koten) bungaku. I also enjoy haiku and tanka, though I don't have strong opinions on particular poets in this area. (For instance, I'm quite fond of the Hyakunin Ishhu collection.) Basho is interesting, but his prose is not as strong as his poetry, and certainly doesn't seem to work well in translation at all.

I'm also quite intrigued by the zuihitsu of the likes of Kenko Hoshi (Essays in Idlenessd) and the diary literature that is very common in pre-modern Japan, though I can't stand Sei Shonagon - she reminds me of the Blackadder version of Queen Elizabeth.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

In short, the Japanese literature I find most interesting is what I believe is called tanbiha.

I've never heard a decent explanation of the term, however, so I use it tentatively. It appears to mean 'drowning in beauty', and I associate it with the very refined aesthetics of Kafu, Tanizaki, Mishima and so on.

Strange that Kafu is in many ways Tanizaki's natural predecessor, and Tanizaki Mishima's, but the gap between Mishima and Kafu almost unbridgeable. Interesting.

[(Anonymous)]

You didn't mention the word "contemporary", no, but as you used the present tense I assumed that was what you meant.
Anyway, I definitely agree about the greatness of Tanizaki and Mishima - it's the contemporary scene I'm worried about. I live in Japan and read the odd novel in Japanese, but very far from enough to have any sort of comprehensive overview, and while there seem to be any number of (usually female) writers who are quite good (Wataya Risa, for example) or interesting (such as the rather unique Tawada Yoko - have you read her?) I can't remember when I last read anything really great. But then again, great literature doesn't seem to be written anywhere in the West either at the moment.

Your interview was very interesting, by the way. Kudos to you for mentioning Kurahashi Yumiko (although I sincerely doubt that she looked like Gomaki), and M. John Harrison, for that matter!

Jan

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

Thank you, Jan, for reading the interview. Credit for mentioning Kurahashi Yumiko must go to Justin, the interviewer (the parenthesised comments in small font are his).

I haven't read Tawada Yoko. What has she written?

I feel a little guilty that I've really read hardly anything contemporary in Japanese fiction.

Although I have some sympathy with the notion that there are no great writers about, being a writer myself, and knowing a great many struggling writers, I tend to think this is more to do with the way literature has succumbed to business values via the relationship between publishers and readers. In other words - I do believe the writers are out there, it's just harder to find them.

For instance, in my personal opinion, Thomas Ligotti is a great writer, whose contribution to macabre fiction is more significant than that of Poe or Lovecraft. And he is living. And he has hardly been heard of by the world at large. Sadly, I think that very quickly after his death his greatness will become more widely recognised. I really wish that readers and publishers were more ready to support living writers. And so I'm rather ashamed that I've been neglecting them at least as far as Japanese literature is concerned. Still, I hope to make up for that.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I should add that the 'sadly' part meant that, it will probably be only after his death. I hope not, but I'm not particularly optimistic on this point.

[(Anonymous)]

Fair enough. But, ironically, many of the ideas (hopefully) echoing through my statement against "united" government systems of ANY KIND (be they for cultural "goodwill" or for whatever else) had their very origins in France (think Paris '68, Lyotard, Jameson, later Foucualt, "the New Left" post-marxist theory, etc.) and are, in any case, decidedly non-American. Granted, there were elements of these factions in the U.S., but overall, the more anarchic strands of postmodernism have never sat well with the American disposition, to put it mildly.

In fact, I'd contend that the more American position is to believe in such a universalist, liberal-humanist (Chompskyan, if you will) ideal that change could be affected if only the "right" (in this case: left-leaning) regime or institution could take over and engineer a more enlightened society. In that sense, UNESCO is still rather American. Instead of the ongoing War on Terror, it's the ongoing War on Cultural Non-Diversity. It's not that it's inherently dubious, it's that it's still reflective of the big, clumsy, hegemonic enlightenment ideals of the 20th Century. In any case, it's just another (as you said) Cold War-era monolith that, as I mentioned earlier surely "means well," as it proposes to "know what's good for the world." I think it was The Who that said, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

But I clearly understand the overall point about an unfortunate aversion in America to anything that sniffs of Franco-cultural attitudes and ideas in general--that's another famously American characteristic that is commonly referred to as anti-intellectualism; nevertheless, it's indeed a continuing epidemic here in the states.

Michael

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

I am here to tell you that there is a certain number of people in China dedicated to ensuring that the English-speaking hegemony is replaced with Chinese-speaking hegemony, plus a shitty brand of failure-centered communism. There are millions in the Middle East that would love to change the current hegemony to Arabic, plus you die if you're a homo, artist, woman out in public, or a Jew.


It seems like only white people are interested in everyone's culture being around. The non-whites seems mostly interested in replacing everyone's culture with their own.

[(Anonymous)]

my point exactly. that's why we should oppose any totalizing systems of power, be they white, chinese, right, left, commie, capitalist, liberal, fascist, etc. They all produce their inversion: resentment and resistance in the end.

There are millions of Christians in America who think the entire world will bow on its knee to Christ at Armageddon and the nonbelievers who do not submit will be slaughtered. "The blood will run in the streets, and the bones will pile up" their "good" book says. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" --The Who

Indeed, there are a certain number of people in every nation who would like the world to look like their nation. I'm part of a certain number of people who doesn't want any nation to look like any other nation. Yes, not even a "liberal" one--that would just lead to fascism with a pony-tail.

Michael

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

And there are millions of Atheists whose only compass of right and wrong is "whatever they happen to want at the time" and who switch justifications to rationalize anything that they do.


Since everyone is BOTH an immovable object and an irresistible force, nothing really changes, but the release of energy in the inexorable conflict destroys everything in the area, be it personal, regional, national or global.

[(Anonymous)]

a classic mischaracterization of atheists: because they do not believe in any organized religion they must have no moral or ethical standards that they live by. (that's not an atheist, that's a sociopath--hardly the same thing). it's as old a position as it is groundless.

nevertheless, i've never met a single atheist who told me that if i didn't follow their way of thinking i would suffer eternal pain at the hands of a supernatural deity. but, every single christian i've ever met has confirmed that if i didn't believe what they believed i would be destroyed by their god eventually. believe me, i keep track of these intellectual barbarians and not a single christian has ever told me that i would NOT suffer this eventual and eternal fate.

the discussion was about groups of people (and by extension, organizations) who have an agenda they're trying to push onto the world--in the case of religions, it's most often been coupled with violence of some sort. atheists = i want to have the freedom not to believe in any religion. but i don't insist anyone else do the same. christians = my bible insists that you will perish violently at the hands of my god if you do not believe in this religion. atheists = believe what you want, but don't ask (or force) me to do so. christians = the world would be a better place if everyone believed as i do.

it's pretty obvious who's the bigger philosophical bully in this match up. and bully they have, and bully they still do--that is, until recently when they seem to have met their match in another equally intolerant religious mindset.

michael

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Well, if anyone in the UK wants to make a difference this week, they can adopt this porr little fellow. (http://www.thehedgehog.co.uk/hercules.htm)

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I might know someone. I shall send this link out immediately to likely candidates. Thank you.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Bless you, Q!

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Update: been told that Hercules has found a home, but there are plenty more little beasties there who could use one.

The world is especially hard on the little things, you know.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

Well that's good news. I've actually been encouraging people here to take part in Hedgehog watch UK - which is trying to get some picture of what's happening to the hedgehog population here. I saw a hedgehog last year, actually, in a street not far from where I live. I'll have to check whether I can report that yet.

By the way, what are your views on naked mole-rats?

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

I prefer mine with paprika.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

What could possibly be more important than wearing beautiful clothes?

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Wearing beautiful clothes well.