My parents died in the recent past.
No.
No?
I have lost my parents relatively recently.
No.
No?
I have failed my parents this way or another most of my life –
and in the past few years my failures gained mortal consequences.
Some people have graves to visit, re-ignite memories, feel some sense of an on going connection.
Some people feel a need for some permanent physicality, a place, a time (eg an anniversary), an object of some kind – to have a link with their dead loved ones.
Some people fight each other since such grave places feel part of them. As if once someone else with different narrative set will control that grave space, place and times – a limb will be taken off from their bodies.
The philosopher, Levinas, is said to have equated such notions of connective identification between humans and a land – with nazism.
After-all, the fabrication of land to be more than what it is as essential to one’s life – aka land fetishism – the father/mother/home lands are terms that were indeed used and emphasised by nazies.
However, Levinas’ claim was, as far as i seem to consider, that such notions of land fetish are an emblem of nazism. ie, that even if you do not necessarily agree with nazism, the land fetish makes you into some kind of a nazi despite other ideas one might have. Since perceiving such a viscerally imbecilic identification with a place – will
inevitably lead a person, a group, a nation, to violent discrimination, vicious prejudice and chronic corruption on all social, cultural and political spheres.
This since the sense of one’s narrative is based on the necessity imposition of something that might exist only as a metaphor. This not simply as if it isn’t a metaphor, but one that is in a constant danger to be unveiled and realised, unlike the emperor’s new clothes, that it doesn’t even have a body to be nude.
In that sense, Nazism’s body is a puff of self contradicting demands. Hence violence is the only way for nazism – and such like – to be, and
violations of all embroiled is the only possibility to become.
A meta-corruptive process to violently violate corruption itself.
Indeed, per Levinas, the very land fetish practised by zionism – is darkly ironical with a nazi orientation.
In my view, with palestine in mind, perhaps it could be mentioned that much of palestinian resistance to the occupation perceives that land in a fetishist way as well.
Indeed, a bit like the darkly ironic support the israeli state has given to the proto nazi apartheid regime, and fascist linked armed groups such as lebanon’s falangists – the palestinian authorities end up having to deny western sahara’s people’s right for independence?
When the land is your fetish, other people’s pain can be far and by nature – neither isomorphic nor comparable.
Perhaps Levinas did not mean much of what it is stated here.
Does it matter whether Levinas has meant such and such or said some much?
If it matters so much, has Levinas words not become some kind of a fetishised land?
Perhaps this might feel a touch too polemical?
Lets get off the nazi tree.
I do recall my parents.
One has a grave I have never been to, nor do i know where it is. Another was cremated and their ashes was spread in the specific area of planet earth they have enjoyed most.
Could I feel as if people swimming at that bit of sea are forever in touch with my parent’s ashes?
With their memory?
Should I shudder at the thought of swimming there?
Is that kind of psychogeographical sense hints at that person’s own little geo fetish?
People can be recalled through their deeds, memories of sounds, the ways they interacted, stuff they might appreciated and so on.
When I encounter a new scent, new food, or a piece of pottery – my mother will always come.
When I hear of a russian cinema, a western, or encounter something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradescantia_zebrina – my father will become in mind.
Currently in Sarajevo. I hear people talk of this place as “my land”. Asked what is meant by that, people talk of an historical sense, a time based connection. A sense that to be linked with their past – this place is required.
Indeed, graves and places of violent acts is often mentioned.
Hence, while I know many people conjour once grieved ones through ways of memories such as I do.
How come that geo psychological practice such as land fetish is so rife – and through that, imho, an embedded, accepted and normalised nazi oriented culture?