CoL X: Nuke/Phallus World Madness

It might just be that I'm a child of the Cold War. Still… It's not interpretive rocket science to see that North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Iran (among others not yet making headlines) want "nuculer" bombs because they equate nukes with "respect." They've said as much. USSR had oodles, the US had oodles, and the French, and others, and the Cold War showed that those who have nukes are respected. They "exist" in the symbolic of world politics more than countries w/o nukes. They are listened to, negotiated with, … and Feared. Respect in this logic (with a k, yes) equals "being feared." And in all of patriarchy, that's also true. Alan Johnson's The Gender Knot is the clearest analysis of this essential logic for those not accustomed to the jargons of the Humanities in recent decades. In each of these cultures, the lowest, ickiest, most abject thing a human can be a girl. (See: honor killings, contemporary sati, the partner abuse stats in the US, &c.).

There is a connection here. It's your basic, armchair Freud. Girls don't have a penis, symbolically (Lacan) they don't have the Phallus (yes, he even capitalizes it): they don't "exist" in the symbolic realm where all the serious business of culture gets done. Girls are not quite human. gah, oldest song in recorded history.

Ergo, therefore, thus: These countries want Nukes because they are the Phallus of politics, in cultures where being the Big Man is a really big deal. (See: North Korea. People starve, fascist government builds nukes with money that should feed people.) And Fear: that's easy. Just consider all the coercion/force or threat of potential force that goes along with traditional manhood in these cultures (Johnson is again helpful here: this is a universal mark of patriarchy). No brainer. I'm sure that Zizek has already been all over this in his ironic and irritating way.

One of the eventual and wonderful side-effects of elevating the status of women in the world, and creating cultures where two sexes and genders "exist," is that this sort of patricarchal logik will dissipate. (See: Luce Irigaray, and damn near every feminist scholar who ever wrote a book, for fuck's sake.) If it's not bad to be a girl, and without a penis, then it's NOT instantly and obviously good to have big cocky bombs that destroy the world by opening up little Suns on the face of the earth.

"My nuke is bigger than your nuke" sword fests will be, well, kinda funny, and will require some other justification. And given what nukes are, and what they do to humans and the planet: There is no other justification.

In a Real Culture of Life this kind of crazy-assed shit does not happen. In cultures that glorify pride and status above actual living people, Cultures of Death, this shit happens. Make no mistake.

Now. Me. I get freaked out every time India and Pakistan get all "I'll nuke you" over Kashmir. (Which, P.S., is historical fallout from the Age of Empire and the sudden withdrawal of Empire after WW2, just like all this other crap that going on with US and Middle East is fallout from that, and Empire was in many ways about the Phallus. Before nukes, the sign that a country was powerful was how much of the rest of the world it had subjugated (read: turned into women, symbolically.). I do. I get scared. Because I hated the Cold War. I didn't grow up thinking I could hide under my desk. I grew up knowing that the air would burn, the sky would fall, and the earth would be uninhabitable for a very long time. See: Chernobyl. My skin, if I lived, might Drip Off like so much warm wax. See: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Or, I might get to live in a bomb shelter, underground, with my brother for 30 years while the earth cooled. At the time, my brother and I were teenagers, and that seemed a fate worse than death. (He was pretty obnoxious there for a few years.) My plan, as recently mentioned, was to drive to one of the ground zero sites near my home -- Luck: there are three, all about 20 to 30 minutes from anywhere I might be -- and die in the Flash. Poof. Painless and quick, and, for a moment, spectacular. I kept a map in my glove box. I had highlighted the routes. I showed it to my dad. He cried, hating it that his daughter felt the need to think about actually ending her life this way. He tried to explain "mutually assured destruction" and "deterrence" to me, and somehow, you know, that just wasn't real fucking reassuring. AND NOW, Iran, and US, and "no option off the table" and I really don't want lovely, kind, pious, generous, creative people in Iran to glow in the dark. I don't. (The president and the mullahs, that's another story. They need to get schooled -- but not nuked.) It's a miserable and hellish thought.

No, it's a hell-thought. That thought is a hell.

When I was a teen and early 20something, I was a very disaffected, punk rock, pissed off girl. There were many reasons, but one was that I woke up and noticed that the Adults, who were supposed to be reasonable and good, had really Fucked It All Up Beyond All Recognition. I lost faith in them. And here I am again, looking at the World, and thinking, "You are still fucking it all up." I'm starting to wear my combat boots more than I have in previous years --- and that is not always a great fashion statement for a prof, nor especially comfy in Texas weather.

Related note. In the interim, I suggest showing everyone on earth the film The Day After, which I watched as a teen, and which convinced me beyond all appeal logical or emotional or patriotic that nukes suck big time. Some imperialist chafing is Nothing compared to that hell in which people are starting over and killing each other for, and possibly as, food. Mad Max just turned that into a sort of Greek mythic epic thingy. Don't think Mad Max, it's too cool and adventurous.

Another related note. Coke had an ad in the 70's. "I'd like to buy the world a Coke, and keep it company…." Lot's of cute, clean hippies on hillsides singing and swaying together like Hari Krinshna's (and I like Haris, they're very sweet and kind), and it's back. Updated, but back. We were in Vietnam then, and nukes were everywhere. We're in Iran and Afghanistan now, and nukes are everywhere. Coinkidink? Not so. Marketing and coincidence are not fellow travelers.

I would like to stop reliving my own History. I've read this book. It sucked. I would like to create some History that's new all the way down to its most basic structural and metaphorical levels. You know, the levels at which nuke=phallus=respect operate, down underneath the conscious mind. Lots of our Habits have to change. This, I know, is neither easy nor short term. I know I will not live to see this kind of world manifested. That's OK with me. I would like you and I to get started now. Tinkering on the surface is good and right, but in the long run, much deeper changes are necessary.