More than one hundred years ago, during a trial opposing the small kingdom of Romania to the French entrepreneur André Hallier (it is about the building of a part of the Constanta harbour), the would-be French president Raymond Poincaré uttered one of the dicta which will label for over a century Romanian cultural space. As he said : “Que voulez-vous, nous sommes ici aux portes de l’Orient, ou tout est pris à la légère...”. The colonial undertones of this utterance, opposing an “anarchic” East to a “well-ordered” West, where presumably everything is taken seriously, know a long history of appropriations and parodies, but seem to have been a constant, albeit cynical response of Romanian elites – in a sort of schizophrenic appropriation of the Other’s gaze – to different states of affairs which befall this part of the world during the last century. Here (or there), the things are like that, as if a latent natural leaning towards corruption, disorder and complacency are inscribed in Romanian DNA. Just as if blatant stupidity, authoritarian policies and nepotism were evils one cannot oppose. The success of such an utterance can also be explained as it echoed this time a self representation dear to Romanians, developed by the romantic reading of an ancient Balkan legend, Mioritza, revived in 19th century during the national building process which conveyed literature and history as much as it conveyed military fervour. The kernel of this romantic reading is briefly this: in front of the inexorable fate there is no sense in resisting. Death will have us all in the end. According to this dicta Romanians are calm, peaceful, albeit disordered. But are they?
One cannot escape the feeling that the nowadays institutional power sees the Romanian demos through both the lens of Poincaré’s scold and the defeatist cum romantic reading of Mioritza. And it is indeed what the cultural right struggled to inculcate not wasting any chance in conveying all means of symbolic violence ranging from institutional legitimation to more pervasive forms of argument from authority, such as stating purely and simply – I say so… What they are creating is their version of an idealized people. “True” Romanian subjects are peaceful and docile, just like the anhistorical shepherd of Mioritza, calmly waiting for his end. When caught with the pants down, and publicly presented as corrupt, potentates of the day will mumble in a voice: well, remember, we are here at the gates of the Orient, there’s nothing serious about these frauds. Indeed, things might have continued like this as long as the neoliberal consensus would function on the backs of corporate blue collars and on the wasted lives of the struggling proletariat, who, facing deindustrialisation, fled in all the four corners of Europe in search of mere survival. And then the crisis struck. Since then, the political spectrum in Romania could be better depicted as this trailer of the Legio video game presents the “puny kingdom of Belalagusia”, that is a spectacular, devoid of life and cut off from the people, “game of conquest”. If the austerity measures taken during 2010 by appeal to a fiscal “state of emergency”, haven’t sparked much opposition, except the poorly staged trade union protests, a strange conundrum of events seem to have opened the stage for an authentic civic protest.
One might find just and clear statements of facts here as well as here. As it has been stated, the Palestinian-born doctor situation was an unlikely catalyst, which prompted many a commentators to link the sudden popular support with the vaguely similar situation created at the beginning of ’89 revolution around Lazlo Tokes, in Timisoara. But unlikely as it may seem this sudden popular backing of the Health ministry official, more improbable, appeared the fact in its bear materiality of seeing people taking on the streets of Bucharest, for five days now. The lack of a culture of protest, the crisis of democracy as well as the signs of entering in the age of post-politics, seemed to have been for a while the distinctive traits of contemporary Romanian political culture. One may add to this the retreat of the public intellectuals of the 90s in the spheres of established power, as well as an increase recourse to emergency measures taken by the government, be they in terms of taxes or in the sphere of employment. It is precisely against this grim background positively entertained by a media preaching the “apocalypse at the gates” and glorifying obscenity, that the institutional power found itself facing a first authentic uprising in the last 20 years. Something has changed. Here (or there) at the gates of the Orient things have started to be taken seriously. Here (or there) the humble shepherd stopped dreaming about his end and started to worry about it.
1. Authenticity: A first question which arises is that of the authenticity of such a movement. After abortive attempts to mimic the Occupy movement, which haven’t sparked much interest in the public sphere, protesters gathered in pitting, this time, clearer messages against authority. At a first view, one can remark that none of the protests (at least in Bucharest) has been organized according to the Public gathering act. Being spontaneous, it came short as regards to cold legality, which requires a 3 day notice. Failing to comply to such an obligation constitutes a misdemeanour. As such, participants to protests, took the risk of being fined and, eventually, filed by the authorities. Such a risk, though minor in itself, stands for a more significant symbolic act. When a threshold in the relation with the institutional power has been reached, breaking the law didn’t seem a deterrent for acting. Moreover, it signalled a subjective position of the protesters qua actors in relation to the power. It is thus significant, that when asked by Gendarmerie forces what they are doing in the streets the usual response will be an appeal to the higher level norm, i.e. the constitutional right to express disagreement, protected under the freedom of speech. Such a sudden empowerment signalled also a reflexive stand of re-appropriating the original status of the primal constitutional subject, the people. Even more, the plurality of views expressed in the public space (ranging from calls to return to monarchy, to sophisticated post-political projects) during the protest days along to a shared discontent of the spectacular “political” spectrum, attest once more for the authenticity of such an up-rising.
2. Return to politics : Some commentators of Romanian protests have justly read the events as “a rebirth of the political nation”, while stressing out the proper political dimension of opposing authority and cutting with a tradition which linked citizenship to religion and ethnicity. It can also be added that the appropriation of the public space, specifically of the historical Piata Universitatii, tried, at least unconsciously, to place the movement in a continuation of the ‘89 revolution, but also of the 90s anti-communist protests. In this manner, is seems that after 20 years of apathy, the “stolen” revolution returned on the streets of Bucharest, and the body politic resurged once more from the divided and atomized population. As one of my best friends said, after returning from the Piata, “my heart was filled with joy … if this isn’t the anatomy of freedom, I don’t know what freedom is”. As a distant spectator, I cannot reply otherwise than my joy stems from seeing resistance sparking and people re-creating itself as a demos, asserting its sovereignty. The common Romanian has been subjected to humiliation, spoliation and finally, indifference for too long. A subject imagined by the revolutionaries of 1848, mocked by the plutocracy of the 19th century, regressed to the status of a tribe by the fascisms of the 20th century, dissolved by the repressive “really existing socialism”, and turned into a mass of meaningless abstract signifiers by the IMF technocrats – the people of the constitution became only a ghost. But it is terrible when ghosts return and they claim their due.
3. Violence : One thing should be clear from the start : violence is not and should never be justifiable. On the other hand violence is necessary to any serious attempt of undermining the status quo. Which brings us to the paradox of the inherent relationship between violence and any form of asserting sovereignty. One cannot affirm himself as a subject situated supra legem, where is the true place of sovereignty, without exerting a form of violence, be it only in symbolic form. Of course, there is a serious gap between symbolic forms of violence and true, brutal force. But in a clash whose very stake is the statement of supremacy (remember that the protesters demand the president’s resignation), material forms of violence pertain to the adversarial position of the conflict opposing the state to its subjects. There has been much talk these days in Romania over the illegal and unjust violence of some of the protesters. Conspiracy theories and accusations coming from both sides never cease to circulate : the Gendarmerie accusing protesters of violence, the protesters accusing the Gendarmerie of abuses. The media praying on catastrophic messages and insisting on “battle”, “anarchy”, “hooligans”, “anarchists”, decrying the damages. Then followed the creation of a mass hysteria against football supporters who, on Sunday evening, changed the peaceful protest into what was described as street-fights. Of course, there are many truths about abuses and violence on both sides, and every attentive reader of Foucault may have an idea about the ambivalent role of the marginals during uprisings. As such, they are both the ones able and ready for direct conflict, but also the mass of manoeuvre of the policing forces, as many are already under the surveillance of authorities. However, the debate over different categories of protesters (the “good” protesters, the “stand-by”, the “evil anarchists”) seem to overlook the obvious fact, that by its very form, a protest is disruptive, it does violence to a certain order of things, it puts into question the very core of authority.
4. Again violence : Moreover, what is constantly ignored, is also the level of the inscription of violence in Romanian reality as such. Not only Romanian society, still very traditional in many respects, sustains strict hierarchies founded on ownership and affluence which are blatant (just try to get a meal in a good Romanian restaurant in province when the local potentates are present and you’ll know what I mean), but also the constant uncertainty fuelled serious frustration. We are fucking angry say the rioters in Bucharest. They are youngsters, not all of them hooligans, not all of them “baieti de cartier” (corner boys), not all of them so young – there are hipsters, rockers (there are quite a few in Romania) and punks, skinheads blending with gypsies (who have already been beaten by the gendarmerie). And how could you be otherwise than angry, when the authorities supposed to represent you have made a common rule of breaking the social pact, when the exception has become the rule and the rulers of the day defile obscenely in the media scolding the poor for being poor, the sickened for being sick and the weak for being at all? I will not develop here on the systemic violence inherent to capitalism – just a quote as a response to the artificial awe on the TV screens in front of the outbursts of anger : “is it at all surprising that a society founded on the opposition of classes should culminate in brutal contradiction, the shock of body against body, as its final denouement? (Marx, Philosophy, 1847)”. In relation to this, one may remember Foucault’s statement in the debate with the Maoists over the concept of popular justice : “the masses, when they perceive somebody to be an enemy, when they decide to punish this enemy (…) do not rely on an abstract universal idea of justice, they rely on their own experience, that of the injuries they have suffered, that of the way in which they have been wronged, in which they have been oppressed”(Foucault, Popular justice, p.9). In other words, once the authority, through its actions is identifiable as an enemy, as the people decide it as an enemy, they return the wrongs they have been subjected to.
5. Shame : It is not by accident that the event sparking the protests has been something which can easily be described as a public humiliation the president subjected Raed Araffat to. To some extent, the tasteless scolding has made it easy for the regular Romanian to take awareness of his being part to a “tradition of the oppressed”. As the media objectified this power relation in a concrete manner, the pressure has certainly came to a point were a simple reaction of anger, or a retreat in the relative comfort of home was not possible anymore. The Thing continued to stay there, un-symbolized, persisting, calling for words and actions, for ritual and exorcism. Then things become political. For sure, something happened at the level of subjectivity which made the image of the president to appear precisely as an embodiment of the phallic father, the horrible little man who is force devoid of authority. Maybe it was the all-too presence of the object which made people think (yes, even common people do think), that enough is enough. Or maybe there was no place to run to anymore. Seen through these lenses, reactions politicians uttered yesterday- such as that of one the governing party’s senators, or the Romanian ministry’s of foreign affairs – seem illuminating for the overt humiliating representation of the people. As such, for the Senator, the protesters expose a “worm mentality” ( i.e. they are actually worms which have a mentality, if that could ever make any sense), as for the ministry of foreign affairs they are the product of “inept and violent slums”. It goes without saying that such sheer distaste will not help much in appeasing the conflict.
6. Politics again : We don’t know for sure what the outcome of this up-rising will consist in. However, these protests express a rupture in the ways of doing politics in Romania. If historically, social uprisings and revolutions in this part of Europe have resorted to different forms of authority to guarantee and legitimize their actions (one might recall Tudor Vladimirescu in 1821 pretending to act in the name of the Czar; the revolutionaries of 1848, reassuring the Ottomans of their loyalty towards the Porte), nowadays protesters do not have any Big Other on which to rely. Moreover, they do not act as members of a group, be it trade unions or political parties. They act only as the people, in its bare life, trying to reclaim its place in the political order, while trying to recover the political itself in a world from which it has been excluded and reduced to pure economical speculation or assertions of authority. They are as such devoid of a stable subjectivity, but are subjectivity. And this must draw our attention to the last crucial point, that is the future of these protests. On Thursday, the opposition parties announce organized protests of their members and sympathizers in support of the movement. What is going to happen to this form of subjectivity once the powers of the spectacle will be on stage again? What is going to happen at all with these spontaneous burst of anger, solidarity and reclaim of sovereignty? If the state of exception in which we live draws on a separation between law and life which goes together with a continual investment of life by law (in its residual, marginal form, of force of law), what is at stake in every authentic protest is the meaning of life itself. Its accomplishment stays for a regain of life, but its failure, is the return into the shadows of worldlessness.
Bibliography:
Michel Foucault, “On Popular Justice: A Discussion with Maoists” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 1972-1977. Ed. C. Gordon. ,Trans. C. Gordon, L. Marshal, J. Mepham, and K. Sober. New York, Pantheon Books, (1980).
Karl Marx, The poverty of philosophy, 1847 available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/index.htm
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