En Manufacturando el consenso (1988) e Ilusiones necesarias (1989), entre otros libros, Noam Chomsky nos explica cómo se ejerce el control del pensamiento en las sociedades democráticas. Chomsky es uno de los grandes intelectuales libres de nuestro tiempo. Una mente lúcida e inquieta. Y este es un tema querido de los norteamericanos, en la tradición de eso que Alexis de Tocqueville llamó “soft despotism” o despotismo ligero en su libro sobre la democracia americana, publicado en 1835. Tuve la suerte de conocer a Chomsky, de prologarle un libro en la edición española (Año 501: la Conquista continúa, 1993). También le pude hacer una breve entrevista en Washington D. C. para El País, por esa época.
En esa línea, tengo la impresión, tal vez errónea, de que uno de los objetivos primordiales pero no declarados del proceso de “socialización del individuo”, del proceso de incorporación de este a la sociedad es el de idiotizar a ese mismo individuo. Las excepciones al consenso no sirven más que para justificar la teórica libertad que pregona el sistema. Este es un largo proceso de uniformización a través del sistema educativo, de catequesis religiosa, cívica y patriótica y de manipulación a través de los medios de comunicación. El resultado son individuos homologados y vestidos con un único patrón de ideas que recibe el nombre de consenso.
¿Es o puede ser el escritor una suerte de disidente? ¿Es aquel destinado a pensar “out of the box”? De alguna manera, y bien sé que hay todo tipo de escritores y de relaciones de estos con su sociedad, pero yo siempre he querido ver o sentir al escritor desde su rol, o desde su deber, de disidente. Todo libro sincero, toda frase honrada, debe formalizarse como una invitación a disentir. Y como un profundo ejercicio de libertad. Me gustaría que así fuera, y que nada se aceptase sin concurso de un debate propio. Y esto que digo no está la margen de esta regla, desde luego: ¿pido demasiado?
fijate que Vargas Llosa acaba de ganar el Premio Nobel de Literatura. ¿Por sus épocas de out of the box" o por la in?
ResponderEliminarDicen los suecos: "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat".
Como a Balzac, su literatura lo supera aunque quiera escribir en nombre de una corona actualizada
Querida Cristina, no sé si dentro o fuera de la caja pero es un escritor formidable. En cuanto a lo que digan los jurados, bueno, ya sabes, tópicos...
ResponderEliminarIt was about time MVL got the Nobel Prize.
ResponderEliminarT, you've changed the order of factors and I'm lost. I'll paste the last one now.
Cristina, he was never out of the box as he was always influenced by Balzac,Flaubert and Faulkner and his originality is based on his writing skills and his ability to merge so many literary traditions together ..or so we were taught, ;)) That's regarding his cartography of structures. the rest I can't say because I haven't read any of his latest/more recent novels only his editorials in Elpais.
My concern is with the present and the long hours of unemployment ahead, shall we have the discipline and strength to go back to reading novels? Are we not fragmented by the structure of Internet that has us searching constantly, therefore only reading as a searching tool? Are searching just for the sake of searching? Like my younger cousins and their children who search on the topics we are talking about, ie, say a movie.We are speaking about a film and then they start searching on it. Reading a as conversational piece...?Reading whatever we find when we are surfing? My latest attempt to read novel was the last Harry Potter.Which was yours? Do we want to have the time again to read novels? Does it not convey long journeys, often uncomfortable, escape from boredom and unemployment? We will have new young readers and our chance to being read is now?
You quote Christ. In lingusitics in my faculty in Dublin’s DCU: “UCD for dyslexic” was the joke at the time, our own professor and other academic decision makers quoted BC and AC: Before Chomsky and After Chomsky.
ResponderEliminarI concur that socializing is to make us idiots, consensus idiots, for pretty much the same reason they have taken chronology our of school books. I wonder if they’( as in the powers..that-be.) dare to be so irreverent towards science subjects. As you’ve probably seen in your children’s school books in Literature, for example, Lorca can be studied before the Lazarilllo, while in History the chronology of events is taken out also. So all the revolutions are studied together, all the world wars etc this descontextualiziation events, thus taking out the consequences and effects that makes one understand events. It’s as if the fairy tale was broken up before it was even told for the first time. I’m using the example of the Fairy Tale because it is the most studied subject of literary folklore, Propp tell us its structure as we can see it applied in el Conde Lucanor, for example. A small good wolf doesn’t make sense unless you have previously known if the big bad wolf.
What I am saying is that deconstruction is being used to erase the construct, thus making all knowledge senseless. I feel the powers that be are trying to destroy our stories, myths and heroes to achieve our consumers’ consensus rather than a cultural / political a one.
Have we gone from Manufacuring consent to destroying content/sense? No, don’t drag me back to madness and civilization. No that sense as in “cordura” but as in logic, reason, cause and effect,ie sentido/ significado..
Shouldn’t we be constructing dissent? Through our writing and teaching? Should we be supporting the centros sociales okupados? Shouldn’t we lounge in the romantic gardens of la tabacalera?
Cristina, I've been thinking and you are right. Of course, each author, language and period is a box, and MVL managed to put them all together extrapolate them to create his own. (I know I should wait and think things through before answering but this little white square is so tempting....)
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