Crosses and Croissants Get Sticks in the Eye

It is apparent that putting a Muslim community center close to the 9/11 site is the equivalent of a stick in the eye to many non-Muslim Americans. Why be so inflammatory?

I don't know, since I haven't spoken to any Muslims about the situation. I do know that if I were an American Muslim whose family had been here for a long time, and who had been demonized, as middle-eastern folks were after 9/11, this would be an opportunity I couldn't pass up. Yipes -- I got to conditionals, like I promised before. And I got in a performative, by the way!!! A two-fer!!

We are a country, like most, with the political intelligence of Miles the Cat. The idea that Muslim folks who have lived down the street for the last 20 years should beg my forgiveness for 9/11 sounds like a bit much. Yet, that's just what we required. "I don't hear the moderate Muslims condemning the use of violence!!", went the refrain. We want them to satisfy our -- what? All this is about the ultimate function of so much of ordinary language: to determine who belongs, and who doesn't. In this instance, if you grovel, you make the cut. Our minds can be put to rest.

I was around when the JDL was causing quite a stir, and made violence very personal. There were constant, tiresome entreaties to mainstream Jewish organizations to disown the JDL. Well, the long-standing groups never owned them in the first place, and found themselves stuck between defending a bunch of pretty nasty folks, or else capitulating to the demands of a society that had never put out much effort to defend Jewish communities here or anywhere else. Nice choices. It was very hard for them to make up their minds how to respond.

I didn't hear the reactionaries condemning the use of violence after Oklahoma City, either. I do often hear holier-than-thou rants about the Taliban targeting police and village elders; then I hear about the American list of a thousand Taliban who have been singled out for assassination. No need to grovel here; this is pure American stuff, and doesn't move any of us outside.

It reminds me of the old SNCC days. SNCC was the most abrasive of African-American action groups in the 60s. Their leader was Stokely Carmichael, a very charismatic and smart man. He was hounded by the press, at literally every opportunity (how tired of it all he must have been!!): Would he renounce violence? He readily agreed that he would be glad to sit down with the white sheriffs of Alabama and Mississippi and they would all issue a joint statement renouncing violence. He had a little smile as he said this. For a century, the white sheriffs had terrorized African-Americans throughout the South, with a systematic brutality that murdered and maimed, and SNCC was supposed to renounce violence?? A stick in the eye indeed. The meeting never happened. The sheriffs wouldn't change their minds about their vision of race, and refused to grovel, as well they might. But, neither did Stokely Carmichael, and his sparkling mind enchanted millions.

To demand renunciation is to seek capitulation, and renunciation is a ritual of self-loathing. There is a complex relationship between power, capitulation, renunciation and sanctimony. It seems always to be the same. Why do we do this? Still, it all comes down to this: who is a truly one of us, and who not.

In the 1490s, the Jews of Spain were given a choice: find another place to live, convert to Christianity, or be killed. Many did leave, about 160,000, going primarily to the Netherlands and Turkey. About 20,000 died before getting to somewhere welcome. Some estimates double all these numbers. About 50,000 changed their minds about being Christians, going through ritual after ritual to prove that they were really converted. They were called "conversos". Their lives have been the subject of many books and movies; imagine the territory they present!! But they also a good object lesson in ordinary language.

The conversions were -- like I've been saying, all you folks who have been paying attention -- performative utterances. Saying "I hereby convert..." or some such thing, was the act that changed someone from an apostate to a Christian, from an enemy of Spain to a citizen of Spain.

And, the conversions? Surprise!! Many of them were false. Most conversos had no intention of converting, but they were willing to pretend. Torquemada, of the famed Inquisition, was a tad suspicious of them, as you can imagine, and tested them through torture. He was great at torture. But what did he want? The more he tortured, the more false declarations he heard. From the distance of five centuries, it sure looks like he just had fun torturing. Hmmm.

Even The Godfather got into the act: recall the scene of Michael Corleone reciting, at his nephew's baptism, "I renounce Satan and all his works", and at the same time murdering the baby's father. Renouncing becoming an art form.

So, conditionals. As ifs. Is the conversion an as if? Were the conversos acting as if they had converted? Would we say, knowing that their intention was to deceive, that they had actually converted? They were listed on church rolls, after all. And would we say that Michael Corleone meant what he said when he renounced Satan? Most people, I think, would say no. Only those with truly wishful thinking would believe otherwise. Torquemada was not a wishful thinker, but he ultimately accepted many of the conversos. Michael Corleone's sister was not naive, but she accepted his explanations. The pressure of the community sometimes triumphs.

The language of mind meets the language of persecution. No questions of brains here, just the conversions of minds, just rituals of humiliation and deceit, in which all participants go through the "as if" motions. And like all the rest of the performative utterances, talk is cheap, and talk is the most valuable tool of life -- for all these folks, to stay alive.

But, we have come around to it again. All this talk is about mind fact, social fact, not brain fact. It is about enforcing social norms, deciding who is a part of the tribe and who is to be an outcast. It is not about brain function; it is about mind function. Mind appears again this time, as so often, in the vestments of religion. The religious have been having their way with minds, language, and social compliance for a pretty long time. Sanctimony and humiliation do wonderful work.

And here I am. What if all the docs conclude that my mind is damaged, just as my brain is? How would they, and I, know? Well, if my behavior is so odd, so strange, so deviant that I cannot be discussed as a regular human, a full person, then I am expunged from the group. I can pretend, maybe, like a converso, but someone so damaged would have a hard time getting by. I can renounce my mind, like Michael Corleone did. But even that much groveling might not work; ultimately, it didn't work for him.

Hard to imagine the devastation. And is it a performative? Does the act of uttering become a promise? A prediction? A description? I've been around the mental health types for too long to think that those are all the same thing. Maybe the performative is a way of getting more money from insurance companies. It is hard to avoid thinking of diagnoses, in psychiatry always, and neurology often, as performatives. Saying it brings it into being, like a promise or a bet or a marriage.

This chapter is way too long, I think, but I feel in the grip of the TLE, and just can't stop. The message scrawled on the mirror, in the lipstick of the victim, who is lying on the floor in a pool of blood: "Stop me before I talk again". A command? A taunt? A statement of intent? A plea? We've come a long way. And I haven't even mentioned ambivalence!!!

Probably the one thing I haven't mentioned.