The Eternal Recurrence of Racism

This text is an attempt to explain the difficulties and contradictions which arise when questioning the possibility or impossibility of the same thing returning, or something completely new arising. Taking my starting point as Gilles Deleuze’s reinterpretation of the famous Nietzschean concept »eternal return« (or »recurrence«¹), I will look at the nationalist and racist revival in Europe today, and try to distinguish whether we are seeing a return of the »very same« phenomena seen in the past. In this light I also want to examine whether the newly awakened conservatism brings new values, particularly when taking into account the fact that nationalism and racism today »work« so well side by side with neo-liberalism (for example when it comes to creative industry, commercial sporting events or tourism).

[b]Change and Difference[/b]
If one assumes that the issue of Return is closely related to the issues of repetition and reiteration of sameness and equality (identity), then the issue of change should be logically linked to the issue of radical, fundamental difference. However, such common-sense logic and dichotomic distinctions would only have been viable if the principles of immanence and of identity were the only relevant principles when discussing the phenomenon of Return.

According to Gilles Deleuze’s interpretation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous concept of »eternal recurrence« it is not the »same«, but rather it is the difference, multiplicity and becoming that »return«: these are at the heart of the need for a reconsideration and re-interpretation of the Eternal Return. The Deleuzean reading of Eternal Return should take the concept of from its commonly understood sense of a perpetual and ceaseless return of the same, and should open it up to the potentiality of its reading as the return of the difference: »It is not the same which returns, it is not the similar which returns; rather, the Same is the returning of that which returns – in other words, of the Different; the similar is the returning of that which returns – in other words, of the Dissimilar.«²

Deleuze’s unorthodox reading of eternal recurrence leads to a slightly different understanding of the cyclical conceptualisation of time and history from the traditional cyclical theories.³ Thus it is necessary straight away to emphasize the danger that could lead to a misunderstanding of the main discussion which follows later – the discussion about the vehement emergence of conservative, nationalist and racist policies in the newly emergent European states.
I refer here to Deleuze’s warning about the danger of the simplified interpretation of the Eternal Recurrence concept as a mere historical phenomenon. In Deleuze’s view one should explicitly repudiate:

»[T]he naïve reading of Nietzsche that envisages eternal return as a doctrine proclaiming the infinite recurrence of every historical moment in exactly the same order throughout eternity. The perversity of this naïve reading, argues Deleuze, is that it converts Nietzsche’s vision of being as the endless becoming of differential forces into a simple principle of ›identity‹.«⁴

Understanding this solely as mere identity imposes certain limits, and this is no different in nationalism and racism. For Deleuze the Eternal Return rather implies difference and becoming as basic principles that split the very heart of being, and thus diversity and multiplicity occur and recur.⁵ It does not put the »repetition of a universal equality« at stake, »but the movement that produces everything that differs« and thus »the synthesis of becoming and the being […] is affirmed in becoming«.⁶

[b]The cycle of nationalism and racism[/b]
I want to argue here that nationalism and racism in fact prevent the becoming and the affirmation of the »synthesis of being and becoming« exactly by insisting on negation, identity and being. In this context it is important to understand that this essay does not claim that the old phenomena – our historical experience of nationalism and racism – return by a simple cyclical movement, perpetuating history because of the disproportional relation between time (the infinite) and matter (the finite). (This is a popular thesis among many scientists, philosophers and poets in Nietzsche’s time such as J. H. Poincaré and Heinrich Heine). Quite the opposite: rather than assuming that the resurgence of nationalism and racism is due to the limitations of human thought and imagination – after all, these are not finite and exhaustible, unlike matter – it should be remembered that for Nietzsche the Eternal Recurrence was always related to thought, and not to the reality of the »wheel of life« or to history.

There is a certain danger that my text could be misunderstood as an attempt to make a distinction between white people’s racism directed at African Americans, and other ethnic populations in the USA or elsewhere, and the escalating Anti-Gypsy racism of the Eastern European »whites« against Roma people and/or prejudice against other ethnic minorities. On the contrary, I would argue that in this context such distinctions should not be made, even though viable and relevant in theory.

The distinction between various racisms, for example the difference between historic and biological type of racism became clearer through Michel Foucault’s writing on biopolitics, biopower and racism. He also coined the term »state racism« in connection with sovereignty and state power.⁷

Although the various racist phenomena differ historically, they are ultimately founded on a very similar assumption: that there is a hierarchy between different people(s) divided into superior and inferior kinds according to their racial differences, origin and skin colour.

It’s worth reminding ourselves that recent DNA studies have not indicated that any »separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans«.⁸ Although there are different genes for physical traits (such as skin and hair colour), no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome have ever been traced. The most recent thesis – that all humans derived from only two tribes originating in Africa – may be the ultimate ruling-out of any scientific backing for racist theory.⁹

Still, such proofs against any scientific foundation for racism or hierarchies among races have not been powerful enough to overcome centuries of perpetuated prejudice and irrational hatred against the »different«.¹⁰

With regard to the question of hierarchies among different racisms, according to Paul Gilroy, Arjun Appadurai and other postcolonial thinkers, there should be no racial discrimination of lesser or greater importance derived from the darker skin colour or number of members of discriminated populations and communities. Precisely by making such distinctions based on sameness, one would ignite an even stronger essentialist argument: the claim of a »scientific« basis to any racist theories could further reinforce the belief in a biological foundation of racial difference that lies at the heart of racism.¹¹ Consequently, we could say that hate discrimination and racism directed against black people in general makes the most radical and extreme kind of racism, and could fuel the old, but still existant, argument that there are biological or genetic differences among people.

It goes without saying however that there is a difference between the new nationalisms and racisms arising in south and eastern Europe, and those before, during and after the Second World War and perhaps this is the difference that returns in the Deleuzean Eternal Return. But doesn’t this obscure the real question here: would it be enough to say that we are against any racism anywhere and can this be a substitute for the work of solidarity?

[b]Racism, racial identity and racist discourse[/b]
According to Gilroy, even the solidarity built around the sameness of race and nation among blacks themselves should be seen as yet another form of racism and fascism.¹² When asked about the issue of whether people have racial identities Paul Gilroy stated:

»I don’t know the answer to your question, but I do know that the need or desire to attach oneself and represent oneself in that way might look different if things were more equitably dealt with, and might assume a different significance if white supremacy and racial hierarchy were not ubiquitous. So the argument that I made – and maybe I didn’t make it well, I don’t know – was a strong suggestion that, in order to do effective work against racism, one had to in effect renounce certain ontological assumptions about the nature of race as a category, which cheapened the idea of political solidarity, in my view, because it said that solidarity somehow was an automatic thing, that it would take care of itself. But I believe that solidarity – as you, I think, believe – doesn’t take care of itself, that we have to do things to produce that solidarity.¹³

In this statement actually lies the answer to the question around which one could shape the discussion about different understandings of racism and racial identity. I suggest that we should be aware of the distinction between the discussion of racial discrimination that focuses uniquely on the issues stemming out of biological, genetic and physical differences, and the interpretation of racism as a result of complex historical territorial and property struggles; struggles that were culturally covered with the elaborately decorated blanket of the invented racial identity. Gilroy questioned the notion of racial identity as a complex concept that hides several different issues: »So when you say racial identity, I immediately triangulate it this way: there’s the question of sameness; there’s the question of solidarity (which we’ve already dealt with); and there’s the issue of subjectivity«.¹⁴

If we accept Gilroy’s critique of a clinging to the »sameness« of your own group, either racial or ethnic, and his pursuit of the potential for solidarity that is not based on »sameness«, we could conclude that the importance of the artistic and activist actions stems precisely from the solidarity based on difference (but without emphasizing the difference itself). Gilroy points to perhaps the most important issue with any racism: that in racist discourse, society conceptualises the subject (or group of subjects) that is perceived as the »other, the different, both as a »problem« and as a »victim«.¹⁵ As a problem, because it disturbs the established order of sameness, and as a victim, because the compassion that accompanies the victimisation is a kind of redemption. »Racialised resistance« and solidarity, on the contrary, require an action that overrides the endless cycle of problem and victim, and can be difficult to realize.

One way out of racism may be the conscious attempts to deconstruct it by ceasing to cling to the notions of ethnic, national or racial sameness, since the notions of national and racial identity enable and even reinforce the return of repressed racist outbursts. On the other hand one should be aware that the concept of racism must be kept on a discursive level in order to remind us about the power that is stored up by the process of forgetting and its return.

Here one could evoke once more the Freudian concept of melancholia, as has Paul Gilroy, in order to explain ethnic absolutism and racism (or in this context more specifically racism in Serbia), in a similar way to Freud’s explanation of German Nazism as a post war reaction to the loss of a »fantasy of omnipotence.«¹⁶

The export of racist practices in the U.S. and Western Europe, the hatred of the »other« in ethnic, gender or sexual terms, the security state, necropolitics, and the incomplete documentation of human rights violations are some of the most frequent issues that have been addressed in contemporary art that engages with reality. To which racisms do we then actually refer, and how they are related in cultures dealing with racial hatred in Eastern Europe? I am interested in discussing different understandings of racism in today’s culture, because even though publicly it has become unacceptable to admit one’s own racism, there are many different events and phenomena that reveal its existence.¹⁷ In fact racism today is often disguised and transformed into a call either for new values (e.g. neo-liberal development), or as a call for a return to roots and true values (nationalism). Both cases justify chauvinist statements and actions by nationalist majorities.

[b]Nationalism in Eastern Europe and the Balkans[/b]
It is worth looking here at the severe nationalism and racism addressed towards various ethnic and gender minorities in the former Eastern European states and the Balkans after the split of Yugoslavia (and particularly during the transitional period towards the application of neo-liberalist economics and entry into the EU). For example, Serbia today is undergoing substantial changes virtually overnight. It is torn between the desire to catch up with the other Balkan states in the race for accession to the EU, on the one hand, but at the same time with the race to catch up with the transition (or should I say transgression) to neo-liberal capitalism, that is often seen as an unwritten (e.g. in the EU acquis) but important hidden agenda and invisible »bench-mark«.

The hatred towards native Kosovans, who in the eyes of the radical nationalists, but also of other conservatives, are the ones to blame for the shrinking of Serbian territory and power, cannot be entertained openly: the issue was repressed in order to get points for EU reassessments. Such repression of one ethnic racism resulted in the outbreak of another; one that is more ancient and more generally recognisable – the hatred towards Roma. One could argue that, while Serbia attempts to deny the contemporary effects of its recent loss of Kosovo, it has effectively reaffirmed its power through concrete racist and neo-liberal actions.¹⁸

However, there are very few artists who courageously embarked on working with the very sensitive issues of Anti-Gypsy racism in the Balkan region, and who also deeply understood the complexity and duties attached to these issues. They are issues which have been continuously addressed and tackled in the collaborative and participatory art works and activist projects by the artist couple Vladan Jeremic & Rena Rädle. The projects that they related to the racial discrimination against the Roma people include »Under the Bridge Belgrade« (2005), a collaborative community-based project realised in collaboration with Alexander Nikolic, Tanja Ostojic, David Rych and other artists; »Journey to the World of Our Wishes« (2008), a participatory project with young Roma children; and »Writing on the Sky« (2008), a collaborative work between Nannette Vinson, Rena Rädle and children of Stari Kostolac, Veliko Crnice and Požarevac. In their most recent work, the video documentary »Belleville«, 2009 (DVD, 22 min) Jeremic & Rädle recorded the consequences of the violent eviction of 45 Roma families from the barracks in New Belgrade. The eviction and turning down was assisted by police without allowing the residents time to save their belongings, but was also supported by neighbours, who showed no solidarity with the evictees. By contrast, various activists, art and cultural organizations protested against such state action, but with no result.

Here we are drawn back to Michel Foucault’s concept of »state racism« that in my view should accompany even the most irrational and psychoanalytical explanations of the imaginary origins of racism. Namely, that even if we agree that racism is a phenomenon closely related to the subconscious mechanisms of repression, could we ignore the urgent need to »psychoanalyse« the state apparatus that tolerates and allows the Roma issue and the racism directed at the Roma people that continues to exist? Foucault was perhaps correct in differentiating theoretically between biological (or scientific) racism, historical/social racism and state racism. Such distinctions help us understand how these mechanisms work, but one must be aware that in reality all these racisms collapse into one. They intertwine and serve as a kind of easy definition, even a justification, for the profound hatred and public hate speeches¹⁹ that enable contemporary lynchings to take place in front of the eyes of the state »order« and, moreover, even often allow the perpetrators to go unpunished.²⁰

[b]Positive affirmation of difference as an opportunity[/b]
Despite all every cultural attempt to eliminate racism, we see many of this societal disease coming back time and again. By establishing the complex relations between the subject’s position and the societal context in the racist debate, one could better understand how it was possible that neither the subject nor society succeeded in expunging racism from human behaviour, and not only in Eastern Europe. What is striking is the absurd fact that racism going back far into the past can be recognised and, unfortunately, tolerated and perpetuated regardless of whether behaviour is modified. As if the existence of such racism in the past justifies its return.

My questions therefore are cultural and social, and are directed at the mechanisms and technologies that allow and even support such events and actions to happen time and again. However, we should return once more to Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche, and ask how it is possible to have the return of difference if it does not have anything in common with what has previously existed. At first sight it seems that the Nietzschean test, motivated by the possibility that »actual consequences, and an agent who suffers them, will recur indefinitely«, as the eternal return, does not appear in Deleuze’s reinterpretation of the Eternal Return that affirms only contingency and the initial moment of »not having any particular mode of action necessitated, or of openness to the future«.²¹ »Deleuze argues that it is the affirmation itself that recurs eternally, and not the consequences, or even the agent who does the affirming. Reaction, negation and sameness do not return, and the consequences of actions do not return.²² However, according to Deleuze, Nietzsche’s eternal return is selective, and it is a test: whatever we want, we must want its eternal return. Thus it becomes law for the autonomy of the will »freed from any morality«.²³ If one agrees with such Deleuzean interpretation of Nietzsche – that eternal return is repetition that selects and thus saves²⁴ – then the question is how was it possible that racism returned (if a negative can return) and how could one understand it as an affirmation of anything but the hatred of difference?

I suggest here that the only possible way to understand the return of racism today in the Deleuzean sense (and not as a historic return) could be to understand it as an eternal recurrence of a selective test that is always a potentiality of a »turn«: a new chance for an »intensified experience« given to humanity to »uncheck« the box where it says »eternal return« and to grasp any radically different actions that affirm difference such as solidarity, cohabitation, etc.

Some ideas in this text are based on conceptual information about the exhibition curated by Jon Rzvan project »Exploring the Return of Repression« (Center for Contemporary Art and Culture, Bucharest, Romania, September-November 2009) as well as recent works by Vladan Jeremic & Rena Rädle.