Berlin Journal 22

In this issue:
Peter L. Lindseth
Michael Ignatieff
Elizabeth Povinelli
Richard Deming
Karen Russell
David Remnick
Katherine Boo
Daniel Hobbins
Nicholas Eberstadt
Michael Geyer
Charles Bright
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Spring 2012 | Number Twenty-Two | The Berlin Journal | 1
CONTENTS
The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty-Two | Spring 2012
04 Of the People
peter l. lindseth, by way of Abraham
Lincoln, examines democracy and the
Eurozone, and how even those Europeans
who favor integration may have difcul-
ties experiencing it as their own.
08 Politics for Hard Times
michael ignatieff speaks to the chal-
lenges facing progressive politics in an
age of austerity; namely, persuading the
majority who are doing well that their
future depends on doing something
about the large and growing minority who
are doing badly.
14 Emergence and Exit
elizabeth povinelli theorizes neolib-
eralisms collapse, the concurrent rise of
radically new forms of social governance,
and the increasingly multi-polar nature of
the global economic engine.
18 On Loneliness
richard deming ruminates on modern
isolation through the lens of horror lms
and offers two of his latest poems.
N1 On the Waterfront
The American Academys newsletter,
with the latest on fellows, alumni, and
trustees, as well as recent events at the
Hans Arnhold Center
25 The Sponge Divers of New Kalymnos
karen russell grants a sneak peek at
her new ction and describes the eerie
nature of authorial intuition.
29 Journalism as Literature
david remnick, joseph lelyveld,
and katherine boo discuss the novel-
istic tendencies of narrative reportage.
32 The Worlds First Media Revolution
daniel hobbins reveals the oft-ignored
origins of print, and how, contrary to
most historians assumptions, a rising
demand for books came before, not after,
Gutenbergs famous invention.
36 Waning Crescent
nicholas eberstadt explains the
decline in fertility rates, traditional mar-
riage patterns, and living arrangements
currently sweeping the Muslim world.
40 A World in Process
charles bright and michael geyer
chat about their rst encounters with
globalism, the curiously brief heyday of
Western empires in the twentieth century,
and the urgency of re-narrating modern
global history.
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ANTHONY MCCALL, YOU AND I, HORIZONTAL, 2006, INSTALLATION VIEW
Untangling the EU Crisis Setting the Record Straight Sounding the Depths
This issue was generously underwritten by Academy chairman A. Michael Hoffman, to whom we are very grateful.
2 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty-Two | Spring 2012
DIRECTORS NOTE
Devotions depths
R
ichard Holbrooke wasnt interested in foreign
policy; he was consumed by it, writes Jacob Heilbrunn
in a New York Times review of The Unquiet American,
a new collection of essays on the late diplomat and Academy
founder. In this issue of the Berlin Journal, we offer a selection
of articles from authors who are similarly anti-dabbling in
their devotions, whose work reveals the deepest of dedications.
Katherine Boo, who spent four years in the slums of
Mumbai researching her latest book, Behind the Beautiful
Forevers, describes her impatience with the self-congratulatory
tendencies of narrative nonction; Michael Ignatieff argues
for a progressive response to the nancial crisis; and Karen
Russell depicts a diving community whose greed drives a good
man to invent bad technology.
Everything was better last year, says one of Russells char-
acters during an initiation ceremony. The cake, the boys. The
mothers looked good last year, what happened? Everybodys
fatter this year! Everybodys choking to death on this foul cake!
While the austerity measures challenging the stability of
the EU have meant less, not more, cake, Russells ornery char-
acter serves as a chorus for a segment of the West whose con-
dence, pre-crisis, was unagging. In an interview, global his-
torians Michael Geyer and Charles Bright offer insights into
the origins of such blind spots. Elizabeth Povinelli predicts the
collapse of neoliberalism, and Peter Lindseth suggests that a
little demos could go a long way in re-unifying the EU.
And yet, as spring slowly warms Wannsees waters, this
issue of the Journal also acknowledges the surprise and relief,
each year, of a gentler season. Richard Deming points out the
counterintuitively communal quality of loneliness; Nicholas
Eberstadt reveals an unexpected study about plummeting
birth rates in the Muslim world; and Daniel Hobbins suggests
that it was a demand for books that inspired the rise of the
printing press, rather than the reverse.
This spring is also the Academys rst under the helm of
its new chairman, A. Michael Hoffman, who draws upon a
substantial record of achievement in the nancial world and a
lifelong championing of non-prot organizations in the arts,
academia, and international relations. As we look forward to
growing with his guidance, we also take a moment to acknowl-
edge the immeasurable contributions of our trustees over the
past fourteen years, who have shown much wisdom, passion,
and perseverance in building an institution from scratch.
G.S. and B.L.S.
THE BERLIN JOURNAL
A magazine from the Hans Arnhold
Center published by the American
Academy in Berlin
Number Twenty-Two Spring 2012
PUBLISHER Gary Smith
EDITOR Brittani Sonnenberg
IMAGE EDITOR
R. Jay Magill Jr.
ADVERTISING Berit Ebert
DESIGN Susanna Dulkinys &
Edenspiekermann
www.edenspiekermann.com
PRINTED BY Ruksaldruck, Berlin
Copyright 2012
The American Academy in Berlin
ISSN 1610-6490
Cover: Jenny Holzer,
TOP SECRET 21, 2012, Jenny Holzer,
member Artists Rights Society (ARS),
NY/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012, Photo:
Jens Ziehe, Courtesy Sprth Magers
Berlin/London
THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
IN BERLIN
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Gary Smith
DEAN OF FELLOWS & PROGRAMS
Pamela Rosenberg
CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE
OFFICER
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FOUNDER Richard C. Holbrooke
HONORARY CHAIRMEN Thomas L. Farmer, Henry A. Kissinger,
Richard von Weizscker
CHAIRMAN A. Michael Hoffman
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TREASURER Andrew J. White
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Richard K. Goeltz, C. Boyden Gray, Vartan Gregorian, Andrew S. Gundlach,
Helga Haub, A. Michael Hoffman, Stefan von Holtzbrinck, Wolfgang
Ischinger, Josef Joffe, Michael Klein, John C. Kornblum, Regine Leibinger,
Lawrence Lessig, Wolfgang Malchow, Nina von Maltzahn, Wolfgang
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OF THE PEOPLE
Democracy, the Eurozone,
and Lincolns threshold criterion
By Peter L. Lindseth
I
n a recent speech at Humboldt
University, Herman Van Rompuy, presi-
dent of the European Council, noted how
the Eurozone crisis had seemingly forced
national leaders to take center stage in
the EU. For many observers, this has raised
fears of a renationalization of European
politics. Van Rompuy, however, preferred
to look on the bright side. This was all
indicative, he said, of the deepening of
the Europeanization of national political
life. He quoted Chancellor Merkel in this
regard: In this crisis we have reached a
whole new level of cooperation; we have
arrived at a sort of European home affairs.
Europa ist Innenpolitik.
There can be no doubt that Europe has,
indeed, become domestic politics. Yet I
would argue that the Eurozone crisis has
merely accelerated a trend that began at
least twenty-ve years ago, with the Single
European Act (sea) of 1986, followed by
the Treaty of Maastricht of 1992. It is no
coincidence that concerns over Europes
purported democratic decit began to
intensify at this time, because it was then
that increasing numbers of Europeans
became aware of how much regulatory
power had migrated to the supranational
level. Even though the EUs annual budget
would remain miniscule (no more than 1%
of total EU gdp), the EU would become a
prodigious producer of regulatory norms
with a major impact on domestic policy-
making in its member states.
There was, however, a funda-
mental problem with this so-called
Europeanization of national political life.
Joschka Fischer, then Germanys foreign
minister, identied it in his own speech
at Humboldt in 2000: European gover-
nance has long been aficted indeed,
is still aficted by a broadly held sense
that integration is a largely bureaucratic
affair run by a faceless, soulless Eurocracy
in Brussels. No matter how much
European elites have struggled against
this perception, European citizens still
continue to experience the increasing
EUROPEAN GOVERNANCE HAS
LONG BEEN AFFLICTED BY A
BROADLY HELD SENSE THAT
INTEGRATION IS A LARGELY
BUREAUCRATIC AFFAIR RUN
BY A FACELESS, SOULLESS
EUROCRACY IN BRUSSELS.

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CARSTEN NICOLAI, PIONIER II, 2009. SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATION ON PIAZZA PLEBISCITO, NAPLES, ITALY
Europeanization of domestic politics, if
not precisely as the negation of democ-
racy on the national level, then certainly
as the transfer of regulatory power to an
unaccountable, distant, and ultimately
foreign bureaucratic elite, dominated
by national executives. This distant elite
goes simply by the name Brussels or,
as the German writer Hans Magnus
Enzensberger put it in a Spiegel essay last
year, the sanftes Monster Brssel the
gentle monster that is Brussels.
The ofcial response to this broad
political perception toward the EU, begin-
ning with the sea in 1986 and continuing
with every subsequent treaty up to Lisbon
in 2009, has been to increase the role of
the elected European Parliament (EP) in
the supranational policy process. The aim
has been to reduce integrations so-called
democratic decit, building on decisions
of the European Court of Justice (ecj) in
the 1980s. Very much in keeping with the
constitutionalist mindset the court had
established since the early 1960s, the ecj
declared that the EP was the expression of
the fundamental democratic principle that
the peoples [of Europe] should take part
in the exercise of [supranational] power
through the intermediary of a representa-
tive assembly.
W
e might call this par-
liamentary democratization
strategy, which has been a
fundamental feature of the understanding
of the EU as a kind of quasi-federal consti-
tutional polity. Alas, as subsequent events
have shown, this strategy has ultimately
failed to stem the negative perception of
the EU as fundamentally bureaucratic
and distant. This is due to the fact that the
strategy itself is based on a fundamental
misunderstanding of what democracy is,
as well as how true democratic legitimacy
is realized over time.
To frame the discussion, allow me to
do something not particularly innovative
by invoking Lincolns classic formulation
from the Gettysburg Address democ-
racy is government of the people, by the
people, [and] for the people. The effort
to democratize the EU has made sig-
munity gains this historically grounded
sense of democratic self-consciousness, it
has become a demos in the sense of
demos-kratia, or democracy.
In other words, democratic legitimacy
in the deepest sense depends not merely
on democracys inputs or outputs. Rather,
it ultimately depends on whether there
exists this crucial sense of historical iden-
tity between governing institutions and a
people self-conscious of itself as such. I
would argue that this sense of demos-legit-
imacy is not merely essential to democracy
but also to constitutionalism itself: it is
on the basis of this demos-legitimacy that
merely functional institutions of rule
(those that might otherwise possess input
and output legitimacy) are transformed
into genuinely constitutional ones,
because they have come to be understood
as the institutional expressions of the right
of the demos to rule itself.
A
s is well known today, the EU
is riddled with multiple demoi
across its various member states.
This creates a great deal of democratic and
constitutional legitimacy, unfortunately
not for the EU, but for national constitu-
tional bodies. (There are exceptions, of
course, such as in Belgium, where the
coherence of the national demos is deeply
contested, thus undermining the legiti-
macy of national institutions.) But as is
broadly recognized throughout Europe,
the EU, as yet, lacks any single, over-
arching European demos. Without such
demos-legitimacy that is, without the
sense that European institutions are genu-
inely the peoples own, rather than some
distant bureaucratic construct Europe
will always have a great deal of difculty
overcoming its democratic decit, no mat-
ter how much input and output legitimacy
otherwise exists.
Indeed, the very idea of a democratic
decit in the EU may itself reect an elite
misapprehension of the nature of the prob-
lem. As my book Power and Legitimacy
describes in some detail, the problem in
the EU is not a democratic decit, in the
sense of needing increased input legiti-
macy, but rather a democratic disconnect.
European institutions are generally per-
ceived as beyond the control of democratic
and constitutional bodies in a historically
recognizable sense, and this has a bearing
on the scope of authority that Europeans
believe supranational bodies can legiti-
mately exercise.
nicant achievements along the nal two
of Lincolns dimensions. Government
by the people refers to what academics
call input legitimacy; that is, popular
participation, most importantly via elec-
tions (the European Parliament clearly
meets this criterion, as do other features
of the EU, like the new citizens initiative
in the Treaty of Lisbon). And, despite the
many woes of the current crisis, my sense
is the EU deserves signicant credit in
terms of government for the people, or
what the German political scientist Fritz
Scharpf has famously called output legiti-
macy. This can be measured not merely
in additional points added to net gdp as a
consequence of market integration (if not
of the common currency), but also by such
things as the removal of border controls;
the broadly shared respect for human
rights and the rule of law; as well as, per-
haps most importantly, the overall sense
of peaceful coexistence that integration
has brought to this historically troubled
continent. (Peace, after all, was the stated
aim of the Schuman Declaration in 1950.)
Thus, despite its current economic travails,
the EU has much to be proud of in terms of
output legitimacy as well.
So what, then, is the problem with the
EUs democratic legitimacy? I would say
the problem lies precisely in Lincolns
threshold criterion: government of the
people. This refers to the historical iden-
tity between a population and a set of gov-
erning institutions; that is, to the political-
cultural perception that the institutions
of government are genuinely the peoples
own, which they have historically consti-
tuted for the purpose of self-government
over time. Europeans may favor integra-
tion for all sorts of instrumental reasons,
but they do not yet experience it as their
own.
This process of self-constitution is tied
to the historical sense of the existence of a
people itself, to the sense that there exists
a historically cohesive political community,
shaped by broadly shared historical memo-
ries, in which it is legitimate for the majori-
ty to rule over the minority in a democratic
sense (subject, of course, to the protection
of human rights). When a political com-
THE PROBLEM IN THE EU IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT,
IN THE SENSE OF NEEDING INCREASED INPUT LEGITIMACY,
BUT RATHER A DEMOCRATIC DISCONNECT.
Sympathetic European commentators,
not to mention judges on the ecj, have
struggled for decades to reconceive the
nature of democracy and constitutional-
ism in the EU. They have come up with a
whole range of network-based theories
of transnational or cosmopolitan demo-
cratic and constitutional legitimacy in
order to dissociate these concepts from the
nation-state and thus bring supranational
governance within their conceptual ambit.
And yet the idea of the EU as democratic
and constitutional in its own right has
remained deeply suspect, at least when
measured against the perceived legitimacy
of institutions on the national level, with
all their many aws.
I should say that there are many benets
to this sense of supranational constitution-
alism, notably in the protection of the indi-
vidual against the excesses of public power,
wherever located. But there are also sig-
nicant risks, as the Eurozone crisis may
be sadly demonstrating. Constitutional
interpretations of integration wrongly
bracket out the no-demos problem and thus
effectively assume a degree of autonomous
legitimacy in supranational governance
that is fundamentally lacking (or at least is
still fundamentally in dispute).
This leads us, then, to the key point:
overestimating the legitimacy of European
institutions is not merely an error of aca-
demic analysis; rather, it can lead to even
more profound and dangerous errors
of institutional or policy design, as the
Eurozone crisis is demonstrating. As the
Italian political theorist Stefano Bartolini
presciently warned in 2005, in his book
Restructuring Europe, the risk of miscalcu-
lating the extent to which true legitimacy
surrounds the European institutions and
their decisions . . . may lead to the overes-
timating of the capacity of the EU to over-
come major economic and security crises.
The events of the last two years suggest
that the European Monetary Union (emu)
was built on just such an overestimation.
The common currency was not just awed
economically (although economists never
tire of pointing out that the countries of
the Eurozone and certainly Germany
unclear how stable the resulting institu-
tional settlement would be. One might call
the resulting regime a political union, but
its underlying socio-cultural and socio-
political foundations would be tenuous.
Does this mean there is no legitimacy for
further integration? Of course not. But
when contemplating further steps in inte-
gration, Europeans must always be honest
with themselves about this key question:
legitimate for what?
In a system where democratic and con-
stitutional legitimacy remains fundamen-
tally national, but signicant normative
power is increasingly supranationalized, it
must be recognized that there are limits to
the EUs legitimacy, as the Eurozone crisis
is unfortunately indicating. Integration is
good for certain things but not others. It
might be very good for harmonizing regu-
latory standards across borders. But dena-
tionalizing taxing and spending power to
any signicant degree, as some argue is
the only way to solve the Eurozone crisis,
may yet prove a step too far.
D
espite the many efforts to
create a version of constitutional-
ism beyond the state in the EU, the
current crisis is a further manifestation of
a still basic fact in Europe: government of
the people is still wedded to the nation-
state in crucial respects. How long that
will last, I cannot say. But the Eurozone
crisis seems to be reminding us of an
insight stressed by the French philosopher
Ernest Renan in his famous lecture What
is a Nation? in 1882, something arguably
still true despite all that has changed in
the intervening century and a quarter. The
current crisis reminds us that, in extremis,
national institutions in Europe are still
looked upon, in terms of political culture,
as a guarantee of liberty in a collective,
constitutional sense, something that
would be lost if [Europe] had only one law
and only one master.
Peter L. Lindseth is the Olimpiad S.
Ioffe Professor of International and
Comparative Law at the University
of Connecticut and the spring 2012
Daimler Fellow at the Academy.
and Greece do not constitute what they
call an optimal currency area). Rather, it
was also awed constitutionally, in terms
of its lack of a foundation in demos-legit-
imacy. Given the downside risks that the
Eurozone crisis is now revealing, the adop-
tion of the euro presupposed a degree of
centralized political power and legitimacy
most importantly relating to shared tax-
ing and borrowing authority (Eurobonds)
that the EU, or rather the Eurozone coun-
tries collectively, simply lack.
I
n his speech at Humboldt,
President Van Rompuy continually
pointed out the fact that total debt lev-
els and the general scal position of the
Eurozone as a whole were actually pretty
decent, at least as compared to, say, the
United States or Britain. The problem with
this claim is that the Eurozone as a whole,
aside from the fact that it shares a common
currency, along with some common insti-
tutions like the European Central Bank, is
otherwise a statistical artifact with no real
political existence of its own. It certainly
lacks shared taxing or borrowing authority
that might take advantage of the overall
sound position of the Eurozone as a
whole (for example, via Eurobonds).
So why not just more Europe? Why
not just solve the problem by creating the
long-sought political union to match the
currency union? The answer is simply
stated, even if its manifestations are com-
plex: no demos. European elites cannot
simply wave the political-cultural magic
wand and create the necessary sense
of democratic and constitutional self-
consciousness across national borders that
constructing such a union would demand.
To do so without the requisite demos-
legitimacy the sense of government of
the people would be the institutional
equivalent of pouring good money after
bad. At this point in Europes history, it
cannot get from here to there.
The functional demands of this crisis
may yet force Europeans to attempt to
supranationalize some of its member
states debts, at least if it wants the com-
mon currency to survive. But it is quite
OVERESTIMATING THE LEGITIMACY OF EUROPEAN INSTITUTIONS IS
NOT MERELY AN ERROR OF ACADEMIC ANALYSIS; IT CAN LEAD TO EVEN
MORE PROFOUND AND DANGEROUS ERRORS OF INSTITUTIONAL OR
POLICY DESIGN, AS THE EUROZONE CRISIS IS DEMONSTRATING.
THE ANSWER IS SIMPLY STATED,
EVEN IF ITS MANIFESTATIONS ARE
COMPLEX: NO DEMOS.
A
s I write, Europes leaders are
gathering to try to save the com-
mon currency yet again. They have
failed before, and failure this time may put
into question the destination a continent
gave itself after 1945. Instead of progress
towards ever closer union, we must now
envisage the possible break-up of the euro,
the re-emergence of border controls, and
the bubbling up of a politics of resent-
ment and recrimination that could end in
conict between classes and even between
nations.
The strategic, economic, and social
future of a continent is at stake. The
European project was supposed to guaran-
tee the future of Europe by creating a single
market of a size to rival the Chinese and the
Americans. A strong euro and a strong pan-
European economy in turn would sustain
the European welfare state as an alternative
to the American and Chinese social models.
A continent integrated from Ireland to the
borders of Russia would consign to the past
the divisions of the Cold War. The euro cri-
sis puts all of these dreams at risk.
We can see now, in hindsight, that a
common currency required a common
scal and budgetary regime to constrain
sovereign imprudence and political
fecklessness. Yet instead of locking in a
common scal discipline from the begin-
ning, European governments tried to have
the best of both worlds, monetary union
without loss of economic sovereignty. Both
weak and strong states then exploited the
euro to pass their problems onto their
neighbors. Strong states like France and
Germany evaded their Maastricht commit-
ment to keep their debt at three percent of
gdp, while weaker ones like Greece, Italy,
Portugal, Spain, and Ireland went on bor-
rowing sprees, convinced that the Eurozone
would bail them out and that rising asset
prices would cover their scal decits.
Instead of transcending sovereignty, the
European Union systematized the transfer
of moral hazard from weaker to stronger
sovereigns. But the bond markets are sig-
naling that a limit has now been reached.
The burdens of debt in weak economies
are so large that no European institution
can pay them except by printing money,
which frightens any European, especially a
German, with memories of what ination
did to Weimar democracy.
There is a solution: to confer veto powers
over national budgets to European institu-
tions in return for European guarantees on
the sovereign debts of all states. But this
requires both strong and weak to surren-
der economic sovereignty, and it requires
European electorates to transfer power
upward to technocrats. The economic prob-
lem can be solved but only at some consid-
erable cost to European democracy.
Europes democratic heritage can sur-
vive upward transfer of scal and monetary
policy only if other powers are transferred
downward to the people through devolution
and only if European institutions remain
accountable to a pan-European electorate.
R
ight now, neither Brussels
nor national parliaments are in
charge. It is the markets that are
dictating terms to European democracy.
Already the bond market is charging inter-
est rates for government debt that will
make it impossible for them to dig them-
selves out of their hole without intervention
from the ecb and the imf. Sovereigns cant
get credit from the markets, and business
credit is drying up. The continent faces a
credit crunch and, if its leaders dont act
quickly, years of recession.
Political solutions are within reach in
the form of scal and monetary union but
there may no longer be time enough for
the politicians. Economic solutions also lie
within reach, but they have been left so late
that Europe faces a lost decade of declin-
ing productivity, unemployment, and
stagnation.
Crisis, as all politicians know, is an
opportunity to be seized. Let us hope
Europe will seize its last chance. The deep-
er question is why Europe and Europeans
failed to act so far. Why has a concerted
political response taken so long? One
might have thought that a threat of system-
ic risk to all would coalesce the political will
to act in common. Not so.
Years of growth concealed the real
problem the growing inequality between
nations, classes, and regions in Europe.
As long as European economies were all
growing, increasing inequality could be
contained. As soon as the economy stopped
growing, inequality and resentment at
other peoples better fortune or their fool-
ishness made a coordinated response to the
common crisis more difcult.
I
t has taken me a long time to appre-
ciate something my father, a Russian
immigrant to Canada who came of age
in the Depression, once told me about hard
times. When I asked him what it was like
in the Dirty Thirties, he said that if you had
a job it was like being on a train: you were
in the heated parlor car up front while the
unemployed were in the unheated freight
cars at the back.
So it is today.
When the unlamented Silvio Berlusconi
was asked how serious the economic crisis
POLITICS
FOR HARD TIMES
Who pays for austerity?
By Michael Ignatieff
RIGHT NOW, NEITHER BRUSSELS
NOR NATIONAL PARLIAMENTS ARE
IN CHARGE. IT IS THE MARKETS
THAT ARE DICTATING TERMS TO
EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY.
CLAUS GOEDICKE, PFLASTER (FROM THE SERIES SOME THINGS), 2008, INKJET PRINT, 59,4 X 42 CM

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world. Resource economies like Canada
and Australia are dependent on Chinese
demand for commodities. Cash-rich com-
panies in the developed world are depen-
dent on the outsourcing opportunities
and the consumer markets in developing
nations. Already the outlines of a new divi-
sion of labor are emerging. When demand
returns in Europe and North America, jobs
may not come back for the millions of mid-
dle class North Americans and Europeans
who grew up working in manufacturing
and services.
I
n an economic crisis, everyone is in
a ight from risk to security, but no, we
are not all in this together. Because we
are not, we are lining up behind radically
different political solutions. In the United
States, the Republicans defend austerity
and decit cutting to push the costs of
recession onto the vulnerable, with tax
cuts designed to render the new inequality
permanent. This solution class warfare if
there ever was appeals, paradoxically, to
those who may pay the price for it: private
sector workers who feel that their taxes
are being wasted bailing out big banks
and sustaining inefcient public sector
jobs. The Democrats want to protect pub-
lic services and the public sector through
tax increases on the rich. This appeals to
workers who either work for government
or are dependent on public services. Each
partys approach to the crisis is not so much
a solution as an attempt to entrench the
privileges of the groups that support them
politically.
Everywhere the crisis pits those who
have some security whether it be high
income or protected public service jobs
against those who do not have secure
pensions, employment, or prospects.
Progressive politics in an age of austerity
comes down to this: persuading the major-
ity who are doing well whether they are
nations, classes, or regions that their
future depends on doing something about
the large and growing minority, of weaker
states, poorer regions, and lower income
groups who are doing badly. A progressive
politics will have to show that if we are to
get out of recession, we will have to stick
together. This will not be easy.
Germany is a case in point.
As a result of high labor productivity
and the welfare states automatic stabiliz-
ers, Germany has managed the crisis better
than its European neighbors. Now it feels
punished for its success by being asked to
bail out the weaker brethren on the south-
ern periphery.
The German political discourse on its
southern partners recalls what Victorian
political economists used to say about the
undeserving poor: your bad habits are
to blame for your misfortune. Until you
become frugal, efcient, and abstemious,
the Germans tell their neighbors, there will
be no Eurobonds, no bailouts, no interest
rate socialism, no transfer union.
But Germany is discovering what the
rich and strong eventually have to learn:
the weak can bring you down. Weak states,
in a currency union, can destroy the eco-
nomic prospects of the strong.
If the bad news is that a recession pits
strong against weak, rich against poor,
the good news is that eventually the rich
whether they be nations, regions, or
classes discover that their own prosperity
will be threatened unless they help those
left behind.
This is the deeper logic behind German
moves towards further European inte-
gration: the strong are discovering their
interdependence on the weak, and the weak
are accepting that they have to live within
disciplines prescribed by the strong. Even
now, it is possible to think this lesson can
be learned in time.
If inequality is the chief feature of the
recession, as well as the chief obstacle to
political action to dig us out, the question
for progressives is what to do about it. After
all, what denes a progressive politics,
whether of a liberal or a social democratic
variety, is not merely a moral concern
for the disadvantaged, but the economic
insight that growth requires equity in order
to be sustainable. What then are the strate-
gies that combine equity and growth and
get us all out of this crisis?
Here we need to understand some para-
doxes. The most serious market failure
since the Great Depression has not engen-
dered a crisis of faith in markets, still less a
return to Rooseveltian big government or
was in Italy, he replied, What crisis? The
restaurants in Milan were full. The egre-
gious Italian had a point.
The patrons lling the Milanese restau-
rants do not feel the pain. If you are one of
the fortunate few with cash in hand, you
can spend and it costs nothing to borrow. In
a recessionary economy, cash and liquidity
are king and these monarchs confer their
favors on the fortunate alone. Retailers
catering to the wealthy have never done so
well. The cash-rich have not only escaped
the crisis but gained an increasing share of
national wealth.
They are not the only ones who have
been insulated from hard times. Unionized
workers in the public sector are better pro-
tected than non-unionized workers in the
private sector. Native-born are less likely
to be let go than immigrants. Skilled fare
better than unskilled, educated better than
uneducated.
Germans are better off than Greeks,
northern Europe is better off than south-
ern. It is agreeable for Germans to indulge
their schadenfreude and ressentiment
towards their feckless southern partners,
but these emotions may have blinded
German voters to their true interest: deci-
sive action to federate Europe and save the
euro.
Just as the recession creates winners
and losers and fragments political consen-
sus within Europe, it also is creating new
winners and losers in the global economy
at large. Just ask Brazilians. Crisis what
crisis? They have never had it so good. Just
ask Canadians. Their unemployment rate
is two percent below the Americans. Their
banks a heavily regulated oligopoly did
not fall for the sub-prime scam. In my
country, the full burden of hard times falls
squarely on a few shoulders: young people
without post-secondary education, older
workers in declining resource and mining
sectors, recent immigrants, and aborigi-
nals. The guilty secret about recessionary
times is that hard times for the few actually
mean cheap money and rising house prices
for the many.
Yet even those who have held on to their
jobs fear for the future, and in political
terms, this produces a ight to security
and retrenchment. Even the economi-
cally secure understand that this reces-
sion is not just a slump in demand but a
restructuring of the global economy. We
are living through the rst economic
recession in which the developing world
is gaining at the expense of the developed
WE ARE LIVING THROUGH THE FIRST ECONOMIC RECESSION
IN WHICH THE DEVELOPING WORLD IS GAINING AT THE EXPENSE
OF THE DEVELOPED WORLD.
economic insecurity among the haves does
not engender solidarity towards those who
have not. It engenders a political ight from
equity towards retrenchment.
It is commonly said that Occupy Wall
Street has changed the conversation, placed
inequality back on the political agenda
and improved the prospects for progres-
sive politics. Im not so sure. The slogan
of Occupy Wall Street, We are the 99 per-
cent, encourages the illusion that we are
all in it together, us against a tiny them.
But we are not all in this together. If we
were, liberals and progressives would be
winning the political arguments. But we
are not. Conservatives are winning because
they promise stability to those who are win-
ning. They also indulge those who want to
punish the losers.
That much-used phrase moral hazard
has become a powerful alibi for a politics
of resentment. As an example, one of the
chief reasons why the American economy
remains mired in recession is that millions
of homeowners either cannot pay their
mortgages or are walking away from mort-
gages on property that will never be worth
more than their initial investment. A fed-
eral program to reduce interest payments
or write down a portion of these mortgages
would get the housing market functioning
again and stimulate consumption among
distressed homeowners. Such a measure
would help Main Street, instead of Wall
Street, and would be no more expensive
than aid to the big banks.
Interestingly, it is just as unpopular as
measures to help bankers. Your mortgage
is not my problem was one of the signs
visible at a recent Tea Party rally in the US.
A retributive politics, that refuses assis-
tance to indebted mortgage holders on the
grounds of moral hazard, will only prolong
recession. Yet retributive politics is more
popular than a politics of equality.
Equally paradoxical is the resistance of
lower income groups to a politics of equal-
ity that aims at redistribution of income
and progressive taxation. There is anger,
yes, at the unprecedented percentage of
national income that the top one percent
of earners have secured for themselves
over the past thirty years. But even unprec-
edented inequality of income continues to
be widely accepted. Top earners argue that
their incomes are returns on effort, sala-
Keynesian demand management. It has not
created a tidal wave in favor of higher taxa-
tion for the rich, tougher regulation of capi-
talist enterprise, and more generous social
protection for the unemployed. On the
contrary, left-wing governments in Spain,
Greece, and Ireland have been driven from
ofce, and the popular mood is towards
conservative austerity and retrenchment.
In Canada, in the federal election of May
2011, the Liberal Party and I ran on a pro-
gram to freeze corporate tax cuts, eliminate
tax loopholes that benet the super-rich,
invest in education, and support family care
for the majority. It was a scally responsible,
socially progressive program and we were
rewarded with the worst electoral result
in generations. I may not have been the
best possible messenger but notice that the
message also met with failure. Pervasive
P
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G
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b
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Pzer gets involved
Because convictions
can change the world
Our commitment to enhancing the quality of life at every
age goes far beyond the boundaries of our day-to-day busi-
ness. With great can-do spirit, our people strive to improve
the living conditions of people around the world. Here in
Germany, for example, Pzer volunteers serve as reading
mentors at a Berlin primary school. We also support organi-
zations such as the Henry Maske Foundation, which helps
provide real prospects to children and young adults, as well
as many health initiatives. And to protect the environment,
we use state-of-the-art technology to produce our pharma-
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Working Together for a Healthier World. www.pzer.de
PERVASIVE ECONOMIC IN
SECURITY AMONG THE
HAVES DOES NOT ENGENDER
SOLIDARITY TOWARDS THOSE
WHO HAVE NOT.
servatives to persuade them that increased
taxation of the few today will be followed by
increased taxation on the many tomorrow.
P
rogressives should not sulk in
their tents, believing that we are los-
ing these arguments simply because
the other side is more cunning or better
funded. The fact is that disparities in
income themselves, especially those that
are rewards for skill, innovation, and effort
do not seem morally problematic to most
people. A progressive politics that attacks
income inequality itself simply looks like a
politics of envy to the very people it needs
to convince.
A progressive politics ought, I would
argue, to make clear that income inequality
in itself is not the issue, but rather inequal-
ity that inicts harm to those less fortunate.
A company president who takes home sub-
stantial personal compensation in base sal-
ary plus bonuses tied to performance while
providing employment to thousands of
people, together with dividends to investors,
small and large, ought not to be a morally
problematic gure for a progressive politics.
The company president whose compensa-
tion package does not include any penal-
ties for failure, and whose risk-taking and
prot-seeking exposes his employees to
bankruptcy, while ruining investors and
sending shock waves throughout the rest of
the economy is another matter entirely.
There is overwhelming public support for
government that protects ordinary citizens,
as well as their jobs and savings, from the
predatory risk-taking of the few. Nothing has
so weakened faith in government than gov-
ernments failure to do so. Government can-
not and should not protect or compensate
individuals and rms from market bets that
go bad. But it should be there to protect pop-
ulations at large from systemic risks. This
function of government opens up an oppor-
tunity a progressive politics must now seize.
It is time for us to bother with the detail of
rm level regulation regulating executive
pay, reforming corporate governance so that
boards protect share holders and employees
against systemic risk, measures to force
those who trade large volumes in the market
to have skin in the game, personal liabili-
ties that can be called in when their bets fail.
Instead of fulminating against free mar-
kets, a progressive politics should be argu-
ing that what we need are markets that are
actually free. Many of the worst excesses of
the age of greed occurred in markets that
were anything but free, anything but trans-
parent, markets riven by fraud, corruption,
insider trading, and toxic products that dif-
fused risk and made it systemic.
A progressive politics has almost forgot-
ten its long-standing emphasis on the role
of government in promoting free market
competition. We need more, not less, com-
petition in the market, and that means gov-
ernments prepared to use their anti-trust,
anti-monopoly functions going forward to
dismantle institutions that have become
too big to fail and whose failure may
expose the whole economy to calamity.
ried benets that come from working long
hours and taking large risks. Moreover,
outsized incomes are justied when they
are the result of innovations that create
benets and jobs for society at large. This
may be true, though it is worth noting that
the storied achievements of Steve Jobs are
pressed into service to justify incomes from
those in nance and speculation whose
public benet is, to say the least, equivocal.
Clawing back some of these gains, through
progressive taxation, it is claimed, would
harm the many while eliminating valuable
incentives for the few. The fact that one
of the worlds most successful investors,
Warren Buffett, has refuted the claim has
not silenced those who persist in making it.
The interesting political fact is that
these arguments by the privileged few are
persuasive to the unprivileged many. The
latter may earn less, but they have aspira-
tions to earn more. It is easy work for con-
INSTEAD OF FULMINATING
AGAINST FREE MARKETS,
A PROGRESSIVE POLITICS SHOULD
BE ARGUING THAT WHAT WE
NEED ARE MARKETS THAT ARE
ACTUALLY FREE.
CLAUS GOEDICKE, SCHUHE, FROM THE SERIES SOME THINGS, 2010, C-PRINT
Higher taxation of the rich has an impor-
tant place in a progressive politics but the
right rationale for it needs to be restated. We
do not tax the rich to punish them for their
success, or to use them as a cash cow to fund
social programs. We tax the rich so that they
pay a fair portion of the public goods that
account for so much of their private returns.
Indeed, the most effective political rationale
for higher taxation on those who can afford
it is to reduce taxation on those who can
least afford it. A progressive taxation policy
is one that should be revenue neutral, i.e. it
increases burdens on those who can carry
them and reduces it for those who cannot.
A free-market progressivism wants to
reduce taxes on the hard-pressed middle
class, but it can also reduce taxes by reduc-
ing the proliferating tax expenditures in
the form of rebates, credits, and reduc-
tions in favor of simple across-the-board
cuts. This gets the government out of the
incentive business and leaves individuals
more free to determine what incentives to
give themselves.
If we want a politics of equality, we need
to understand also that public discontent is
not just focused on the top one percent of
private income earners. It is also focused
on inequality between public and private
sector workers, between those who receive
their income through tax revenue and those
who do not. Look at the relative success
that US state governors have had in attack-
ing public sector unions and their pension
entitlements. A progressive response has
to focus both on protecting essential public
services and the workers who provide them,
while also reducing the inequality between
public sector and private sector pension,
redundancy, and holiday entitlements.
We should remember that welfare states
create inequalities of their own, and these
may get worse in a new age of austerity. If
we dont understand this, we will end up
with a progressive politics that thinks it
is attacking inequality, when it is in fact
defending privilege, the pensions of public
sector workers, the tenure of publicly fund-
ed professors, the subsidies of artistic and
creative sectors against private sector work-
ers, small business owners, immigrants
without social protection, and other groups
who do not benet equally or in the same
way from the welfare state.
The primal political battle in the years
ahead will be over who pays for auster-
ity: the publicly protected or the privately
exposed. A progressive politics that does
not understand why retrenchment is
necessary does not understand the public
nances of Europe or anywhere else. For
decades European governments have been
borrowing more than they could afford
to sustain the welfare state. The vaunted
European social model was funded on cred-
it, and a progressive politics cannot rally
support behind the defense of the welfare
state unless it simultaneously embraces the
need for reform.
Reform means taking on substantial
interests public sector unions and pow-
erful professions like doctors, teachers,
and nurses, who all perform vital public
work that must continue but who must
reform their practices, shed some of their
privileges, and become more efcient if
the public goods they provide are to remain
sustainable.
Progressives must think through the
necessary scal regime that allows us to
safeguard equality of opportunity for all,
while maintaining scal balance and a
level of taxation that doesnt lead to a capi-
tal strike. Yes, a capital strike is possible.
In a global economy, welfare states must
be tax-competitive: your own companies
can always build Mercedes and Audis
somewhere else. If they move production
offshore, you can kiss your welfare state
goodbye.
In the face of a global division of labor,
a progressive politics that slips into protec-
tionism and defense of declining industries
condemns itself to the margins of politics.
The only way forward is to invest in people,
training, and education, from early child-
hood right through retirement. In an era
of declining demographics and rising skill
levels for all well-paying jobs, a progressive
growth strategy has to bet everything on
sustained investment in education for all.
Equality of opportunity is the key to future
growth and the core response of govern-
ment to the employment challenges thrown
up by a new global economy is to invest in
education for all.
So lets have an economics equal to our
ethics, an economics of austerity harnessed
to an ethical conviction that a competitive
economy absolutely requires that everyone
gets an equal start by way of education and
equal help when fate befalls us, whether
it be illness, or unemployment, or misfor-
tune we cannot master on our own.
A Social Democrat is perhaps more
trusting of the state than a liberal like
myself. It would be good for a progressive
politics to demystify the state and the val-
ues of social compassion it is supposed to
incarnate. Twenty-ve years ago, in The
Needs of Strangers, I argued that the welfare
state did not express solidarity and compas-
sion so much as conscate and bureaucra-
tize it. We administered solidarity in the
welfare state. We did not live it or express it
ourselves.
We need to understand this now,
since the welfare state needs more than
a defense in an age of austerity; it needs
reform: empowerment of compassion
rather than its bureaucratization, decen-
tralization of decision-making rather than
centralization, market disciplines and
competition to contain costs, a service
ethos that treats people as citizens not as
numbers. A progressive does not want to
end up defending the state. A progressive
wants to end up promoting a common life
and equal opportunity for all.
L
et us end with this idea of a com-
mon life: the infrastructure of public
goods roads, schools, libraries, hos-
pitals, training institutes, public transport
that taxpayers accept to provide because
they understand that private welfare
depends critically on an equal structure
of public goods. These goods express the
value of the equal worth of citizens, their
right to benet in common from facilities
that each pays for, according to their ability.
Let us understand the crucial role that
public goods play in sustaining equal
opportunity for all, and let us also under-
stand how important equal opportunity is
for growth. How are economies supposed
to grow if societies entrench forms of
inequality that convince millions of people
new immigrants, ethnic minorities, and
working-class people that the economic
game is over for them before it starts?
Michael Ignatieff teaches human
rights and international politics at the
University of Toronto and is a former
leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.
This essay is adapted from a speech
delivered by Ignatieff at the Einstein
Forum on December 8, 2011.
THE WELFARE STATE NEEDS MORE THAN A DEFENSE
IN AN AGE OF AUSTERITY; IT NEEDS REFORM.
EMERGENCE AND EXIT
The collapse of neoliberal multiculturalism
By Elizabeth Povinelli
H
ow do the financial crisis of
2008 and the ongoing manage-
ment of the euro crisis bear wit-
ness to the emergence of a new phase in
European and Anglo-American liberal gov-
ernance? How do these crises help us grasp
what liberal governance has been and what
it may be becoming? And, perhaps more
cryptically, where it has been? Where are
the geopolitical conditions of liberal gover-
nance to be found? Are they found within
the internal social and cultural logics of
Europe and Anglo-America its Judeo-
Christian heritage? If so, can liberal gover-
nance return to its traditions and remake
the European and Anglo-American world
as Other to others? Or is liberal governance
otherwise to itself, such that this separation
is a dangerous and futile fantasy?
These are clearly huge social, historical,
and philosophical questions. This much
we can say with some certainty: in the
immediate wake of the 2008 nancial
crisis, it looked as if liberal governance was
heading for a signicant reconguration.
An earlier economic crisis had aided the
ascendency of neoliberalism. In order to
dismantle key components of Keynesian
liberalism, neoliberal advocates, such as
Reagan and Thatcher and their advisers,
took advantage of, and deepened, a crisis
in capitalism (stagation) in the context of
what seemed to be a robust alternative to
capitalism (the apparently robust commu- WILLIAM CORDOVA, RUBBER, 2006, PENCIL ON PAPER, 135,5 X 179 CM
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MORE INVESTED THAN SOVIET
CITIZENS IN CREATING FAMILIES
DURING THE WAR, GERMANS
HAD MORE TO LOSE.

nist system). But although the conceptual
underpinnings of neoliberalism were
explicitly opposed to Keynesianism, they
were not a return to the prelapsarian world
of Adam Smiths laissez-faire capitalism,
no matter how often Smith was placed
on the neoliberal pedestal. As I put it in
Economies of Abandonment, neoliberalism
sought to free the market from the con-
nes of the market. And as Amartya Sen
noted in a New York Review of Books essay,
Smith never thought that the principles
of the market should become universal
principles of human moral sentiment
and behavior. Indeed, Theory of Moral
Sentiments seems to make the case that in
order for the invisible hand of the market
to operate effectively and efciently, lib-
eralism must preserve distinct domains
where citizens cultivate non-selsh senti-
ments. The result of collapsing all social
domains into a single market logic was
captured in the opening scene of The Iron
Lady, in which Margaret Thatcher, played
by Meryl Streep, is roughly pushed aside in
a convenience store. The extreme neoliber-
alist is literally run over by neoliberalism.
B
ut by the 1990s, even the gov-
erning left in the US (Clinton) and
England (Blair) had embraced what
John Gray of the New Statesman called
the debt-fuelled free market as the
imperative[s] of democracy . . . destined
to spread universally. It is not surprising,
then, that many public commenters saw
the public humiliation of a befuddled Alan
Greenspan before the US Congress as the
symbolic nail in this ideological formation.
Greenspans shock sounded the death knell
of neoliberalism as a specic conceptual
and practical relationship between capital
markets and liberal governments. Surely
some new way of organizing the states rela-
tionship to markets was on the horizon.
If 2008 spelled the seeming demise
of neoliberalism, on its heels was the
demise of state multiculturalism. Some
forty years after 1968, the term we use
to summarize the effect of a longer set of
anticolonial and anti-capitalist struggles of
militant new social movements, the liberal
governance of social difference in a nation-
al and international framework was under
extreme stress.
T
o understand what was at stake,
we need to remember that state mul-
ticulturalism (the liberal politics of
recognition) was not the goal of militant
social movements or anti-imperialist move-
ments. State multiculturalism was the
response of liberal governance to the threat
these movements posed to its fundamental
principles. It was a politics oriented toward
inclusion, not revolution. It was a multi-
culturalism whose nal horizon remained
the basic principles of liberalism. Thus
in his inuential essay The Politics of
Recognition, Charles Taylor placed enor-
mous emphasis on the moral worth of rec-
ognizing the cultural and social difference
even as he placed a limit on the transforma-
tive potential of this difference. The chal-
lenge he notes, is how to deal with the
substantial numbers of people who are citi-
zens and also belong to a culture that calls
into question our philosophical boundaries.
The challenge is to deal with their sense
of marginalization without compromising
our basic principles. The desire of these
marginalized people to be recognized by
us, and our desire to recognize the worth
of other cultures where such worth was
proven worthy was supposedly the rou
that would thicken the social stew. (Taylor
is clear that the assumption of worth
must be then followed by an assessment
of cultures. If this assessment was not
part of the dynamics of recognition, then
recognition would be a hollow gesture.)
Like Alan Greenspan, who based an entire
career on the view of rational self-interest
as underlying market function only to nd
himself shocked by the irrationality of self-
interest, so Cameron, Merkel, and Sarkozy
in Europe, and Howard in Australia, stood
astounded that rather than the desire for
recognition, many marginalized com-
munities desired nothing more than to be
left alone.
If we want to know what liberal gover-
nance is becoming we need to understand
what it seems or seemed to be exit-
ing. In the wake of 2008 and a series of
announcements about the failure of state
multiculturalism, liberal governance
seemed to be exiting a nearly fty-year
twining of neoliberalism and multicul-
turalism as the solution to two aspects of
liberal governance that were in crisis from
the 1960s through the 1970s: economic
markets and social difference. But, in
hindsight, it is unclear how this twining
manifests itself. Lets look closer at the neo-
liberal ascendency of the market as the sole
bearer of social evaluation. Celebrations of
the democratic spring in North Africa have
occurred almost simultaneously with glob-
al pundits lauding the ability of so-called
technocratic governments demanded by
the nancial markets to bypass the demo-
cratic function in Italy and Greece. And in
China, the supposed inevitable merging
of liberal market and liberal governance
remains a receding horizon even as its eco-
nomic power suggests new possibilities of
capital governance. What if we are witness-
ing the nal recession of democracy as the
necessary sibling of neoliberal markets?
E
ven as this dynamic between
democracy and market is being
played out, the governance of social
difference is increasingly an idiom for
the uneven global distributions resulting
from the nancial crisis. In Greece we
see German gureheads of the economic
bailout portrayed in the idiom of national
difference. In the US, the Supreme Court
is poised to dismantle the last of the afr-
mative action redoubts in higher educa-
tion, and Republicans are set to roll back
advances in feminist health and choice
through the demonization of the sexual
revolution. In France, Muslims; in England,
members of the African-Caribbean com-
munity; in Germany, Turks (and those
assigned to these groups through nothing
more then epidermal resemblance, as
recently seen in Germany through the so-
called Dner Killings) are now subject
to new experiments in liberal governance,
having not agreed to the denuding of com-
munity through the techniques of recogni-
tion. What these experiments will add up
to and how the experiments of a post-
neoliberal market will be tallied remains
to be seen.
IF WE WANT TO KNOW WHAT
LIBERAL GOVERNANCE IS
BECOMING WE NEED TO
UNDERSTAND WHAT IT SEEMS
OR SEEMED TO BE EXITING.

WHAT IF WE ARE WITNESSING THE FINAL RECESSION OF DEMOCRACY
AS THE NECESSARY SIBLING OF NEOLIBERAL MARKETS?

But one thing is abundantly clear: the
transformation of liberal governance does
not originate from Anglo-American or
European worlds. Many political scientists
like to narrate Western liberalism in such a
way that its logic emerges from the internal
civilizational dynamics of the West. And
yet, as I have suggested elsewhere, neolib-
eral economic theory was able to take root
in Britain and the US precisely because
stagnation gripped the Western economies
in the 1970s. The cause of this stagna-
tion was, at least in large part, due to the
Middle East oil embargo and the counter-
hegemonic power of the Soviet Union and
its sphere of inuence. Moreover, state
multiculturalism was promoted as a means
of integrating national difference, not due
to liberalisms own internal dialectic. State
multiculturalism was a strategic response
to the sustained critique of Western impe-
rialism and colonialism and their inuence
on militant social movements. German
Chancellor Angela Merkel could attempt
to create an internally coherent Germany
and a Europe with Christian roots pro-
viding the difference of Western liberalism,
but these roots were always already react-
ing to their extension in other worlds. The
people Merkel lambasts as living among
Germans are living there because Europe
and the Anglo-American worlds were made
as a result of their living through and on
the material worlds of others.
In other words, if we wish to understand
the internal dynamics of liberal governance
in the West, we must look at its external
conditions. The authors of liberalisms
Other are outside liberalism. From the
1960s through 2008, liberals could avoid
the somewhat unpleasant thought that they
were not the agents of history but the effect.
After all, the US was ascendant. West
Germany was testimony to the resilience
of liberal democracies. Japans threat faded
into series of lost decades. The South Asian
Tigers were tamed. And soon the Wall fell
and a series of pundits, most notoriously
Francis Fukuyama, announced the End of
History.
T
he West no longer has this
luxury. The global economic engine
is shifting and becoming multi-polar.
Social protests and massive youth unem-
ployment are the norm. Social difference
is being securitized as the US Congress
approves the use of drones over US cities.
The forms of liberal economic and social
governance emerging in the wake of the
collapse of neoliberal multiculturalism are
as likely to come from outside as they are
from within.
Elizabeth Povinelli is a professor of
anthropology and gender studies at
Columbia University and was the fall
2011 German Transatlantic Program
Fellow at the American Academy.
MANY POLITICAL SCIENTISTS
LIKE TO NARRATE WESTERN
LIBERALISM IN SUCH A WAY
THAT ITS LOGIC EMERGES FROM
THE INTERNAL CIVILIZATIONAL
DYNAMICS OF THE WEST.

DOMBERT RECHTSANWLTE www.dombert.de
Ttigkeitsbereiche
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Immissionsschutzgesetz
Recht der Infrastruktur
und der ffentl. Daseinsvorsorge
Recht des ffentl. Dienstes
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Umweltrecht
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Dr. Klaus Herrmann Dr. Jan Thiele Dr. Konstantin Krukowski Dr. Martin Jansen
Dombert Rechtsanwlte sind bundesweit
ausschlielich in Fragen des Verwaltungs-
und Verfassungsrechts ttig.
Wir beraten private Unternehmen, Verbnde
und Kammern ebenso wie Landesregierungen,
Landkreise, Gemeinden und Zweckverbnde.
Wir sind Anwlte von Unternehmen der
Ernhrungs- und Lebensmittelindustrie, der
Energie- und Entsorgungswirtschaft und
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fr Umwelt- und Gesundheitsbehrden.
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FOR JOHN LYSAKER
H
orror films have the char-
acter of dreams. The cinematic
phantasmagorias hide those
secret faces we do not willingly or con-
sciously approach and yet carry within us
all the time. What we see in such lms
is the mask projected by what we really
fear. The power of a horror lm or the
best ones, anyway rarely comes from
the specic events depicted onscreen. Or
rather, it isnt literally what we see that is
so disturbing, but what deeper fears the
gures and events allegorize in the shad-
ow plays itting and trembling before the
audiences eyes. Watching a horror movie
is a bit like the makeshift pinhole devices
people use to see an eclipse while avoiding
looking directly at the event. With a movie
one realizes that those unspeakable fears
are not merely ones own merely private
terrors; we see that others have these as
well. That means we need not feel so alone.
Joy we tend to share, but we often keep
quiet about what terries us. Watching a
horror lm provides a means of sharing
darkness both literally and guratively.
But what if the fear that we see enacted
onscreen is a projection of what, at its core,
is a profound, existential dread of loneli-
ness? What might that fear of loneliness
tell us about modern life, about how we
conceptualize who we are and how we
stand to others?
Although it rst appeared in 1999, The
Sixth Sense, one of the most popular and
lucrative horror movies ever made, has
remained lodged in the general conscious-
ness. There are any number of reasons why
it continues to linger, but I suggest it lies in
the specic anxiety that the lm not only
represents, but also engages. Thus, the
horror of The Sixth Sense really has little to
do with the ghosts that appear onscreen
these might surprise from time to time,
but they arent that terrifying. And unlike
The Exorcist or The Omen, the theology or
metaphysics arent likely to be too unset-
tling or dredge up a latent dread of forces
beyond our control, to which we are none-
theless subject. Instead, the horror of The
Sixth Sense is born of the familiarity with
loneliness that the lm represents. Beyond
that, perhaps the pervasive condition of
loneliness represented on the screen and
reected back to the audience is not only
recognizable, but we are already lost within
its folds. This dread, this profound, creep-
ing fear is worth looking at.
The Sixth Sense begins with trauma, a
trauma that the protagonist only learns
to recognize at the very end, and yet what
might be more harrowing is not that
moment of crisis, but rather the revela-
tion of what his life has become. Near the
beginning of the lm, child psychologist
Malcolm Crowe (played by Bruce Willis)
is gunned down in his own home after
celebrating with his wife, Anna (Olivia
Williams), the fact that he had been given
a prestigious award in recognition of sig-
nicant contributions to his eld and to the
families and children in his care. Crowes
wife makes clear to her husband, and to the
audience, that the award means others had
noticed all the sacrices Crowe had made,
putting everything after his work, even
their marriage. Given the movies popular
success, I will not recount the plot in its
entirety, and it is sufcient to say that in the
midst of this celebration, the Crowes are
surprised by a former patient, now an adult,
who has broken into their home and who
is brandishing a pistol. The intruder res
at Crowe, wounding him, and then shoots
himself. With the next scene the lm
jumps to some later point in time whether
it be days, weeks, or years later, we cannot
say when Crowe is seated outside on a
bench reviewing his notes on a new case.
What we do not yet know is that Crowe is
now already dead. His new case, the one
he is reviewing, concerns a little boy who
we know the famous line sees dead
people. The boy, Cole (played by Haley Joel
Osment), will later tell Crowe that he sees
the dead everywhere, and their problem is
that they do not know they are dead. This
information will become poignant when
it is revealed in the movies nal act that
Crowe is himself one of these revenants
lacking any realization of what he has
become.
ON LONELINESS
The unbearable lightness of being alone
By Richard Deming
WATCHING A HORROR MOVIE IS A BIT LIKE THE MAKESHIFT
PINHOLE DEVICES PEOPLE USE TO SEE AN ECLIPSE WHILE
AVOIDING LOOKING DIRECTLY AT THE EVENT.
THE HORROR OF THE SIXTH SENSE
IS BORN OF THE FAMILIARITY
WITH LONELINESS THAT
THE FILM REPRESENTS.
T
hroughout the film, Cole
and Crowe ask each other what they
would most like to change about
their respective lives. Crowe poses this as
part of his methodology; Cole poses the
question to his interlocutor. Cole wishes
he did not see the dead; Crowe wishes he
and his wife could communicate. Even
as a ghostly counselor, however, Crowe
teaches Cole that he must listen to the
ghosts, as they crave acknowledgment.
Cole learns to listen to the dead, and as
a result they no longer attack him. He is
able to do the things that provide them
some measure of peace, as when he
delivers a videotape to a grieving father
of a murdered (by poison) little girl that
incriminates the girls own mother. Cole
not only speaks to the dead, he speaks for
them as well. At some level, we might see
Cole as embodying a form of wish fulll-
ment. Who wouldnt want to be able to
have some proxy who would deliver bad
news or confront people for us?
While the movie presents this as a
better existence for Cole, in reality he
is not given much choice. He can either
not listen to the dead and be attacked by
them and shunned by the living, or he
can devote his life how is this not a sac-
rice? to undertake their affairs in order
to let them come to rest, a burden he can-
not rightly be said to have taken up on his
own. Cole becomes popular at school with
his new relationship to himself and to his
own burdens; he no longer avoids people
either living or dead. Is this a happy end-
ing? Cleary, it is meant to be, but the fact
that he has no real choice complicates that
happiness.
Coles insights into others, insights
that come with his acknowledging the
ghosts, lead him to suggest to Crowe a
method of how Crowe, who as yet still
hasnt discovered he is dead, might speak
with his wife. Cole suggests talking to her
while she is asleep, presumably thereby
permeating the boundaries between
dreaming and wakefulness.
W
hat makes The Sixth Sense
something more than just a big-
budget version of a Hollywood
B movie is how it presents loneliness and
isolation as a source of horror. At rst, lone-
liness seems to be a generalized condition,
an atmosphere permeating everything that
happens. Throughout the movie, before it
is revealed that Crowe himself is actually a
ghost, we see a growing distance between
Crowe and his wife they do not speak,
never make eye contact, never touch. In
one poignant scene, he arrives late and
distracted to what seems to be an annual
visit to their restaurant, the spot where he
rst proposed to Anna. He misses dinner
entirely and yet instead of dealing with the
signicance of his being late, all he can talk
about is how the work with his patient Cole
is not going well. She gives absolutely no
response. Later, we discover why.
Such missed opportunities recur
throughout the lm. Anna is often found
asleep in front of the television, the vid-
eotape of their wedding and reception
ickering on the screen. At one point, she
receives and begins to return romantic
Nat Meade builds upon historic painting genre and technique with modern references
drawn from television and other entertainment sources. His character studies deliver
quirky fellow humans with frailty and humor. If Edward Hopper is presenting a scene
that recalls a theatrical performance, Meade says, my paintings recall a televised
Sunday afternoon movie. . . . My gures are sympathetic victims, victims of light and
shadow, as well as victims of a scenario that exists outside the captured moment.
Meade teaches drawing and painting at the graduate and undergraduate levels at the
Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
NAT MEADE, SNEAKER, 2012 OIL ON LINEN, 18 X 14 INCHES
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intentions of a young man. These events
are all recontextualized when we discover
that the entire time Crowe is a ghost that
only Cole, and the audience, can see. This
revelation stuns not only Crowe, but the
viewer as well. The moment Crowe real-
izes this, we are reminded in a voiceover
that Cole had said the dead do not real-
ize they are dead, because they only see
what they want or expect to see. This is
meant to be a comment about Crowe, of
course, but the implications extend past
the screen. Just as Crowe missed all the
signals, the audience has also missed
certain clues, in part because the silence
and emotional distance between Crowe
and his wife seem completely recogniz-
able. Their behavior serves, we think, as
evidence of any marriage that is disinte-
grating. Because the two partners cannot
or simply do not know how to communi-
cate, they lose the capacity to acknowledge
one another. Most viewers will perceive
the emotional distance throughout the
lm as being so familiar it need not be
questioned, so much so that the revelation
that Crowe was dead comes as a stun-
ning surprise. How could we miss the
cues? Perhaps because we are like Crowe
already; we see only what we expect. This
implies two things: 1) that such utter lack
of acknowledgment is a kind of death; 2)
we are each of us intimately knowledge-
able about how such distance looks and
feels; and 3) not only may things not be
what we take them for, we may not be who
we take ourselves to be. Crowes blindness
becomes our insight.
T
his identification bet ween
Crowe and the viewer goes deep, and
this is where the horror comes forth.
That is to say, Crowes crisis is a shared
one. Crowe doubles the audience in another
way: just as he cannot directly engage the
living world, the audience cannot disturb
what happens onscreen. While it is true
that lms often make viewers into voyeurs,
in this case, the members of the audience
are not peeping toms, but ghosts haunt-
ing a world we can watch but not take part
in, just like the ghosts Cole sees. In other
words, our loneliness, which is the mea-
sure of distance between ones self, sitting
there in a darkened theater or at home, and
the others that one sees despite the fact
that these others are, in this case, gures
onscreen becomes manifest in our rela-
tionship to the events we can observe and
have feelings about, yet cannot affect.
It is important to think about how we
respond to Crowe and his disconnection
from his wife and from Coles mother
because this impacts how we think of the
ending of the lm. Crowe is able to move on
once he has accepted that he is in fact dead;
he all but states as much. The movie clearly
offers what is supposed to be a sentimental
ending that resolves the tensions we have
just witnessed. And yet what kind of reso-
lution is this? Are we meant to think, Ah,
they werent unable to communicate their
feelings, he was just a ghost. It is too late to
really accept such a reading of the end since
the audience has to reckon with the fact
that the gulf between Crowe and his wife
looked just like an all too ordinary emotion-
al gulf. The loneliness that we have seen
and accepted all along, that alienation and
estrangement equated to a kind of death, is
only resolved when Crowe acknowledges
that there is nothing more that he can do
about it.
U
ltimately we could see
Crowes acknowledgement as an
acceptance of that which most
people continually deny as much as pos-
sible mortality. Crowe can move on when
he acknowledges that there is nothing he
can do about his being limited by the esh.
In a sense he becomes cured of this denial
of his limitations, that which makes us
human something each of us wrestles
NAT MEADE, LOCAL HERO, 2012, OIL ON LINEN, 18 X 14 INCHES
CROWES BLINDNESS
BECOMES OUR INSIGHT.
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with or outright denies all of the time. Yet,
the sentimentality of the ending doesnt
seem to offer real satisfaction. In part, the
ending is not consoling because Crowe
and his wife only acknowledge one another
and she not consciously because she is
asleep in order to move into further sepa-
ration. Just as the lm ends, the audience
too is allowed to leave the haunted space of
the theater and return to the waking world.
Yet do we move back into the general con-
dition of estrangement from others that
we have just seen depicted? Crowe had to
die in order to acknowledge his condition,
to transform that isolation into a kind of
solitude. The choice, the movie could sug-
gest, might be ours. Will we be like Crowe
and accept our profound alienation? Or are
we meant to be like Cole and be mediators
between the estranged and the situations
that cause others such grief that they can
neither accept a given situation of loneli-
ness and separation or leave it? But again,
what is more unsettling is that we do not
know how pervasive our disconnection
might be it might have gotten to the
point of being so complete that we cannot
change it, but merely acknowledge it and
step away from the world as Crowe does. It
might already be too late.
I dont want to put this too strongly and
suggest that loneliness cannot be over-
come, but I do wonder about the possibility
that we do not know ourselves as well as
we think we do. This, of course, is the very
foundation of psychoanalysis, but it is also
that place where philosophical skepticism
touches on psychology. We cannot know
the world, so the skeptical philosopher
says, and so we cannot know ourselves;
because we cannot know ourselves, we
cannot know the world. In any event, we
cannot really know others and thus we
become isolati in our eld of unknowing.
This seems a dread worth having and
might account, in part, for the prolifera-
tion of technological tools that purport to
be able to quantify our ties to others, to
show that we are not only linked in to some
greater network but that interactions can
be itemized, relationships stored as con-
tacts. Ones existence, so the hope runs, is
afrmed by statistics. There is of course
a growing feeling, a building reservation
that although technology can make it
seem like the world is shrinking, the feel-
ing of alienation and emotional distance
increases proportionally at the same time.
Some of that feeling is functional. Even
if we know what friends are doing half a
world away because of what is on the vir-
tual wall of their Facebook page, we are not
directly interacting with them. More often,
we face screens, not the faces of other
human beings. But while the reservations
about all this social networking even
that trope brings people closer to think-
ing of themselves in technological rather
than organic terms do warrant atten-
tion, it may also be that the procreant urge
towards social media also ows from a
fundamental dread of loneliness. It can be
hard to see the fear for all the desire. The
stand up comedian Pete Holmes explains
that he is giving up Twitter, Facebook, and
all the rest so that he can simplify his life
and just get a service that every hour texts
him the message, Youre not alone.
The kind of loneliness that hovers at
edges is not simply a form of solitude.
Hannah Arendt has a powerful descrip-
tion of loneliness near the conclusion
of her landmark work The Origins of
Totalitarianism. Loneliness is not soli-
tude, she insists. Solitude requires being
alone whereas loneliness shows itself most
sharply in the company of others. . . . All
thinking, strictly speaking, is done in
solitude and is a dialogue between me and
myself; but this dialogue of the two-in-one
does not lose contact with the world of my
fellow-men because they are represented
in the self with whom I lead the dialogue
of thought. Arendt argues that solitude
can transform into loneliness when we
become estranged from ourselves. This
feels like an abandonment of the self,
by the self. What makes loneliness so
unbearable she concludes, is the loss of
ones own self which can only be realized
in solitude, but conrmed in its identity
only by the trusting and trustworthy com-
pany of my equals. The loneliness Arendt
describes is that which strikes Crowe
when he realizes that he is not what he
thought he was, that his isolation is more
complete than he ever knew and that his
loneliness is so recognizable, so familiar
because at some level it is where we fear
we might really be, cleaved even from our
most ercely held sense of reality, a faith in
the existence of things and the possibility
of other minds left riven. The dread of that
loneliness is borne up by a deep skepti-
cism that cannot be resolved.
A
rendt ends her massive opus
with a discussion of loneliness
because she believes that this emo-
tional state, endemic in modern life, gives
rise to the possibilities of tyranny. People
seek the consolation of ideology so that
they escape, at whatever costs, the crush-
ing feeling of nonexistence that accompa-
nies loneliness. The stakes are indeed high
if we consider loneliness and the fears
that surround it. What is called for then
is a process of acknowledging these fears,
of recognizing their place in modern life.
Such a process would be an act of atten-
tion that neither minimizes the fears nor
denies them, but that remains aware of
the threat of loneliness. That threat offers
a means of staying attentive to the rela-
tionship between the self and others, the
self and the world. Those desperate fears
and the shock of recognition activated
by things like The Sixth Sense, or skepti-
cism, or whatever shakes our faith, opens
towards a deepening understanding of the
self. To see the underpinnings of what we
fear is to discover what and how we value.
In this case, such ssures in our sense
of the world can reveal to us that those
private fears of individuation, of slipping
away from everyone and everything, is a
collectively held anxiety. Rather than evad-
ing our anxieties, we can choose the mean-
ing of this shared, intimate fear that we are
each of us alone, and see it as one way
that we can bind ourselves together in all
our fraught and fractured humanity.
Richard Deming is the spring 2012
John P. Birkelund Fellow at the
American Academy.
JUST AS THE FILM ENDS, THE AUDIENCE TOO IS ALLOWED TO LEAVE
THE HAUNTED SPACE OF THE THEATER AND RETURN TO THE WAKING
WORLD. YET DO WE MOVE BACK INTO THE GENERAL CONDITION OF
ESTRANGEMENT FROM OTHERS THAT WE HAVE JUST SEEN DEPICTED?
ARENDT ARGUES THAT
SOLITUDE CAN TRANSFORM
INTO LONELINESS WHEN WE
BECOME ESTRANGED FROM
OURSELVES. THIS FEELS LIKE AN
ABANDONMENT OF THE SELF,
BY THE SELF.
NEW
POEMS
By Richard Deming
THE WEATHER, ALMOST

(For Megan Mangum and Marianne LaFrance)
Somewhere, in an upper room, a light ickers,
then catches. A woman rehearses
the smallest glances, her voice breaking almost
to song. Eyes size up the weight
of boxes, books and pages,
of chipped plates of cold chicken,
and of the beloveds head turned toward
a distant thought.
The throat thickens naming off losses,
absence, the door of a house
near the ocean remains
locked and double-bolted.
What bears its distances?
A replace is lled with October ashes.
Grapes of the late season tear or burst
yet the sugared hope of autumn fruit
carries the mouth, you can now believe,
through the night and its early frost.
Waiting, say it so, becomes a penitent wakefulness.
What else can account our attention?
The face, that endless city
one knows no other.
SCREEN TIME
And do not let the lm end just yet,
the nal frame pulsing against the pearlescent screen:
an iterant winter crosses left to right,
the names scrolling between me and there, snow catches
upon a Russian soldiers epaulet. Do not strike
the scene just yet. Linger like the gure in the painting who never
utters a syllable from his half-opened mouth, or like
a curse remembered from childhood.

Let the unkind light of the sound stage lamps stay lit,
and someone elses vision
guiding
the edges of day into night.
What did you expect? To live through
anything other
than this ending, the fantasy of the perpetual loop
that recollects each splice,
and the handsome stranger who enters the hallway again
and again, each time the rst time.
Stretch me thinner and thinner to become this dark, this quiet
place, become
a ghost to my own papered chamber.
Notebook of the American Academy in Berlin | Number Twenty-Two | Spring 2012
ON THE WATERFRONT
NEWS FROM THE HANS ARNHOLD CENTER
N2 Academy Notebook: A. Michael
Hoffman elected chairman
of the Academy, and George
P. Shultz awarded 2012
Kissinger Prize
N11 Life & Letters: The spring
2012 fellows, recent
alumni books, and Nathan
Englander on his writing
experience at the Academy
N7 Sketches & Dispatches: Kenneth
Rogoff on the EU crisis, James
E. Young on memorials, and
the inaugural Marina Kellen
French Distinguished Visitor
N4 Academy Notebook: Photos
from the launch party of
The Unquiet American, a
remembrance of Richard C.
Holbrooke, in Washington, DC
O
n January 24 at her
Georgetown home,
Academy trustee and
vice chair Gahl Burt celebrated
the publication of Derek Chollet
and Samantha Powers new
book, The Unquiet American:
Richard Holbrooke in the World
(PublicAffairs). Chollet, a
spring 2002 Bosch Public
Policy fellow, and Power, now
special assistant to President
Obama, included in their com-
memorative work a smattering
of essays by some of Richard
Holbrookes closest friends
and condants, several of who
had gathered for the elegant,
candlelit evening. Holbrookes
widow, journalist Kati Marton,
was joined by Rosemarie
Pauli, Holbrookes longtime
assistant and now President
Obamas assistant chief of pro-
tocol. Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton spent a few hours in
conversation before attending
the State of the Union address.
The Unquiet American
Celebrating a new book about the life and legacy of
Richard C. Holbrooke
I
n April 2003, a press
conference was called at the
just-repaired Winter Garden
of the World Financial Center in
lower Manhattan, located across
the street from the gaping pit
of Ground Zero, to announce
an open international competi-
tion for a World Trade Center
Site Memorial Competition.
I was one of 13 members of the
design jury introduced that
day, as part of the competitions
announcement. Together with
jurors Maya Lin (designer of the
Vietnam Veterans Monument in
Washington, DC) and Paula Grant
Berry (whose husband David
died in the South Tower on 9/11),
among others, we implored poten-
tial entrants to this blind competi-
tion to break the conventional
rules of the monument, to explore
every possible memorial medium
in their expressions of grief,
mourning, and remembrance for
what would become the National
September 11 Memorial.
Within two months, we had
received 13,800 registrations
The Memorial Arc
Tracing the articulation of loss over the last 50 years
CONTINUED ON PAGE N8 CONTINUED ON PAGE N4
A. Michael Hoffman at the Helm
CONTINUED ON PAGE N2
C
o-founder and chair-
man of the London-based
private equity partner-
ship Palamon Capital Partners,
A. Michael Hoffman, has
been elected chairman of the
American Academy in Berlin.
Mr. Hoffman succeeds Karl M.
von der Heyden and Dr. Henry
A. Kissinger, who served as co-
chairmen since 2009, and who
will remain closely associated
with the Academy. Mr. Hoffmans
selection followed an exhaustive
international search.
Vice chair Gahl Hodges Burt
called Mr. Hoffmans election an
excellent choice after a thorough
search process. The breadth of
Mr. Hoffmans philanthropic
endeavors and business experi-
ence was exactly the combination
we had been seeking. The board
of trustees looks forward to work-
ing with Mr. Hoffman. Academy
trustee Stephen B. Burbank,
chair of the Search Committee,
said that the committee had been
enormously impressed by Mr.
Hoffmans substantial record
of achievement in the nancial
world, his experience in manage-
ment at the board level of non-
prot institutions, and his very
broad interests in culture and
foreign affairs.
Mr. Hoffman received a BA
cum laude from the University
of Texas, an MA in interna-
tional affairs from Columbia
University, and an MBA from
Harvard Business School. He has
extensive experience in private
equity, built up over more than
twenty-ve years in the industry,
and a history of vigorous com-
mitment to the governance of
academic and performing arts
organizations.
N2 | Academy Notebook | News from the Hans Arnhold Center
Academy Notebook
Before founding Palamon in
1999, Mr. Hoffman was a partner
with Warburg Pincus for eleven
years. Prior to joining Warburg
Pincus, Mr. Hoffman had a f-
teen-year career as a management
consultant with McKinsey & Co,
Arthur D. Little, and Booz Allen
Hamilton. He served for nine
years as chairman of the Advisory
Board of Columbia Universitys
School of International and Public
Affairs (sipa), and is currently
a member of the International
Advisory Board of the university
as well as a board member of
the Blinken European Institute.
Mr. Hoffman also serves on the
International Council of the
Elliott School of International
On a recent visit to Wannsee,
Hoffman described his goals for
the institution and how a nomadic
upbringing inspired his cross-cul-
tural career path.
BERLIN JOURNAL: How did you
rst become acquainted with the
Academy?
HOFFMAN: I had known about
the Academy for some years as
the result of reconnecting with
Gary Smith we both come from
the same town in Texas. Even
though we are several years
apart in age, weve had a chance
to follow one anothers careers.
I reconnected with Gary directly
when I invited Ambassador
Holbrooke, with whom I also had
a close connection, to come and
deliver a guest lecture at George
rently serves on the development
boards of the British Library and
the Museum of London (the latter
as chairman); on the board of the
Guildhall School of Music and
Drama; and is the newly designat-
ed chairman of the Philharmonia
Orchestra.
Academy executive direc-
tor Gary Smith noted: I have
observed Michael Hoffmans
impact on other organizations
with admiration. He is a world-
class strategic thinker with
impressive achievements in
international business as well
as in the academic and cultural
worlds. The American Academy
will benet tremendously from
his counsel and leadership.
An Austrian-American nation-
al, Mr. Hoffman also speaks
a great deal of respect for his
leadership role in diplomacy, and
I felt that if he was at the center
of this, it was likely to be a very
interesting institution. I also
knew Gary to be a very dynamic
individual, and I gured the
marrying of Ambassador
Holbrookes concepts and views
on international diplomacy with
Garys drive and momentum
would be an ideal mix. I have
not been surprised to learn that
it was a very successful partner-
ship over many years.
BERLIN JOURNAL: How would you
describe your goals for your new
chairmanship?
HOFFMAN: I have been busy devel-
oping my goals since becoming
chairman in November; I didnt
German and Dutch. His father,
born in Vienna, was an eminent
professor of geography and twice
a visiting Fulbright Professor at
German universities. His grand-
father was a prominent Viennese
musician and artist and a mem-
ber of the Vienna Philharmonic
Orchestra. Hoffman stated: I am
excited to have an opportunity
to contribute to such a robust,
entrepreneurial institution.
I have been impressed by its
inventiveness and impact on the
transatlantic dialogue crossing
professional silos including the
academic, cultural, public policy,
and business worlds. I look for-
ward to working with my new col-
leagues as the American Academy
enters a new and dynamic phase
of its life. m.m.
arrive with any preset views. Six
months ago, I set out an objec-
tive of traveling to Berlin and
New York to meet with many of
the trustees, at various sessions
or through committee activities,
and using this period to learn
as much as I could about the
Academy: what worked well, what
issues the institution was facing,
and the various opinions on these
matters among both staff and
trustees.
As a result, it seemed to
me that the fellowship and the
distinguished visitorship pro-
grams were in many ways a very
sensible and complementary
set of activities. There was a
clear desire to continue to grow
and develop these programs,
perhaps by modestly increasing
the number of fellows, possibly
Affairs at George Washington
University and the University
of Texas Systems Chancellors
Council, chairs the board of
Richmond University in London,
and is a director of the Salzburg
Global Seminar. Mr. Hoffman
is a member of the Council on
Foreign Relations and the Royal
Institute of International Affairs
(Chatham House).
Mr. Hoffman has also served
on the boards of a number of
performing arts organizations
in London, including the Royal
Shakespeare Company and
the Royal Court Theatre. He
was a founding director of the
Shakespeare Globe Theatre,
and a trustee and chairman
of the development board of
the Almeida Theatre. He cur-
Washington Universitys Elliott
School, in a program I had sup-
ported for some years in honor
of my father, who had been an
adjunct professor there. Lo and
behold, Holbrooke showed up
to Washington with Gary Smith
in tow! I learned he was working
with the ambassador in develop-
ing the Academy. We kept in
touch, and I followed his career
and development at the Academy
from some distance, as I was liv-
ing in London.
BERLIN JOURNAL: Was there any-
thing about the Academy that
spoke to you personally?
HOFFMAN: Well, for one thing,
Richard Holbrookes involve-
ment in the institution was very
important to me, because I had
Second Nature
An interview with the Academys new chairman, A. Michael Hoffman
CONTINUED FROM N1
News from the Hans Arnhold Center | Academy Notebook | N3
raising the numbers of distin-
guished visitors, and making
sure we achieve the right bal-
ance of arts and humanities
on the one hand, and foreign
policy, economics, and nancial
policy on the other. There is
work to be done in each area. It
is also crucial that we have a
reasonable gender mix. I would
point to development activ-
ity establishing endowments
and new programs as my core
objective. Institutions such as
the Academy must be dynamic.
They must continue to grow and
evolve.
Another goal of mine is
addressing the opportunity
of establishing a Richard C.
Holbrooke Center for the study
of governance and diplomacy.
The Academy has been offered
a unique chance through Kati
Martons gift of Holbrookes
papers and his library to the
Academy; the variety of books
and archive materials avail-
able are extremely impressive
and well-suited for what could
become an important center. Its
a very special opportunity for the
Academy to honor its founder.
I intend to put into place a highly
professional center for senior,
high-caliber research fellows
to pursue issues of diplomacy.
It should operate as an active
intermediary for crucial issues,
hosting not only fellows, but also
study groups, roundtables, pub-
lications, and other programs
germane to the center. This
obviously will not happen over-
night, and will require a range of
approaches.
BERLIN JOURNAL: Youre an
Austrian-American national,
and have been traveling to
Europe since you were a child.
How has it been for you to strad-
dle continents all these years?
HOFFMAN: Im fairly comfortable
with a cosmopolitan lifestyle.
I was raised in a European
environment: my father was
Austrian, a political and econom-
ic geographer and professor, who
wrote about and researched the
Balkans (which would eventually
give me insight into Holbrookes
role there, years later). I attended
seven different schools in twelve
years in ve separate countries.
So working in cross-cultural
settings is second nature to me.
When I studied at Columbia and
then at Harvard Business School,
I spent my summers working in
Europe and Africa. As a manage-
ment consultant, I traveled all
over the world and was constant-
ly on the move. I spent four years
in Singapore, from 198387, and
very much enjoyed my time in
the Asia-Pacic region. Ive been
in London since the end of 1987,
and after 26 years of private
equity, Ive set up over a hundred
investments in nine different
countries.
Coming into an organization
like the Academy, I nd my back-
ground helps give me a relatively
quick grasp of the cross-cultural
dynamics at play. I always enjoy
discussing and debating the pol-
itics and economics of disparate
countries and regions. Given
my profession, Im intimately
engaged with Eurozone issues.
Im also grateful for a return to a
focus on Germany and a chance
to polish my German, and par-
ticularly excited to be here at
such a critical time for Germany
and the rest of the world.
Germany is at a crossroads,
where it will be required to play
a more active role in the future,
as both a political and economic
leader of Europe. b.l. s.
T
he American Academy
in Berlin and the
Literaturhaus Stuttgart
were both elated to present the
new German-American series
Head to Head, which began at
the Literaturhaus Stuttgart on
March 5. In the rst talk of the
series, which hosts an American
and German expert to discuss a
topic of their choosing, Academy
fellow Leland de la Durantaye
squared off with the literary
critic of Die Zeit, Ijoma Mangold,
on the nuances and novelties of
Vladimir Nabokovs Lolita. Prior
to their discussion, German actor
Elmar Roloff masterfully read
excerpts from Nabokovs clas-
sic. The ensuing dialogue, which
took place in front of roughly
200 guests, was moderated by
Pamela Rosenberg, dean of fellows
and programs at the American
Academy. The Head to Head
series, whose next event, on June
18, will see Academy fellow and
human rights specialist Karen J.
Alter speak with Justice Angelika
Nuberger from the European
Court of Human Rights, is gen-
erously supported by Berthold
Leibinger Stiftung, Daimler
AG, Robert Bosch Stiftung,
and Verlagsgruppe Georg von
Holtzbrinck GmbH. r.j.m.
Curating
Conversation
A new series stages intellectual debates
PAMELA ROSENBERG, IJOMA MANGOLD, AND LELAND DE LA DURANTAYE
P
H
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T
O

C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y

L
I
T
E
R
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T
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R
H
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S

S
T
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Thanks to Daimler AG, the
Academy is now the proud pos-
sessor of a Smart car. The German
auto companys generous gift was
arranged by Academy trustee
and Daimler Supervisory Board
chairman Manfred Bischoff.
The vehicle is used mainly by
the library runner and will save
approximately $5,000 annually
in car rentals.

M
.

M
A
U
Think-tank directors Martin
Indyk, Strobe Talbott, Jane
Harman, and Steve Coll were
joined by White House press
secretary Jay Carney and social
secretary Jeremy Bernard, jour-
nalists Elisabeth Bumiller, Judy
Woodruff, Walter Pincus, Leon
Wieseltier, legal scholar Cass
Sunstein, and Atlantic Monthly
owner David Bradley, as well as
by lm writer/producer George
Stevens, Jr. and his wife, Liz,
former Academy president and
Bloomberg executive Norman
Pearlstine, Academy trustees
Barbara Balaj and Tom Farmer,
and executive director Gary
Smith. Lacking the ability
to talk or write to Holbrooke,
Chollet and Power said, we con-
soled ourselves by talking and
writing about Holbrooke. Many
others did did the same. Thank
you for remembering my hus-
band, Marton said, and keep
telling those stories, because he
loved you all. r.j.m.
The Unquiet American
GARY SMITH, HILLARY CLINTON, KATI MARTON, AND DEREK CHOLLET
MARTIN INDYK, DAVID KAMENETZKY, WILLIAM SADLACK, STEVE COLL,
GARY SMITH, AND BARBARA BALAJ
SAMANTHA POWER, LEON WIESELTIER, AND CASS SUNSTEIN
GAHL BURT, LIZ STEVENS, GEORGE STEVENS, JR., AND JEREMY BERNARD
NORMAN PEARLSTINE AND
JANE BOON PEARLSTINE
ROSEMARIE PAULI AND
GAHL BURT
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P
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:

J
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S

R
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B
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CONTINUED FROM N1
News from the Hans Arnhold Center | Academy Notebook | N5
GAHL BURT, HILLARY CLINTON, STROBE TALBOTT, AND MARTIN INDYK
DEREK CHOLLET AND VALI NASR JAY CARNEY AND ELISABETH BUMILLER
the Library Group developed into
the creation of the G-8 summits,
which continue to this day. As
secretary of state he presided over
the decisive period of East-West
confrontation that culminated in
the Intermediate-Range Nuclear
Forces Treaty of 1987 and to a res-
toration of trust between the two
superpowers, laying the founda-
tion for a peaceful end to the Cold
War. Since leaving ofce in 1989,
Secretary Shultz has remained an
important force in the formula-
tion of public and foreign policy
in the US and across the globe.
Rozanne Ridgway, former
US ambassador to the German
Democratic Republic, who
worked closely with Shultz dur-
ing her subsequent years as
the assistant secretary of state
for European and Canadian
Affairs, said, of Shultzs legacy:
Secretary Shultz created the dip-
lomatic framework that sustained
the Reagan-Gorbachev dialogue
and gave that dialogue the broad
substance that led to the end of
the Cold War, while preparing
the Atlantic Alliance for a new
chapter in its history. Ridgway
also praised Shultzs unfailing
commitment to human rights
and his determined effort to
work the issue and not just make
speeches about it.
Look for extensive coverage
of the 2012 Kissinger Prize in
the forthcoming fall issue of the
Berlin Journal.
h.h. and b.l. s.
O
n May 24, the Academy
hosted over 300 guests
at the 2012 Henry A.
Kissinger Prize ceremony, held
at Berlins Federal Foreign
Ofce, to celebrate the numer-
ous achievements of former
US Secretary of State Shultz.
Greetings were delivered by
Minister Guido Westerwelle and
Academy chairman A. Michael
Hoffman, and both Helmut
Schmidt and Henry Kissinger
offered laudations. The event
was nanced by Robert Bosch
GmbH, JPMorgan Chase Bank,
and Cerberus Deutschland.
Following the ceremony, a din-
ner for selected guests was
held at esmt (European School
of Management Technology).
Lufthansa generously sponsored
the Shultzes airfare.
Shultzs career exemplies the
ideal of a statesman who seam-
lessly combines an academic
background and business acu-
men to fulll the demands of pub-
lic ofce. Having served in three
Cabinet positions as well as a
variety of consulting and advisory
roles, Secretary Shultzs skilled
diplomacy shaped the transatlan-
tic political landscape and econo-
my during the historic era leading
to the end of the Cold War.
Among Secretary Shultzs
many notable achievements was
his deft navigation of the global
economy as it broke with the
Bretton Woods system in the
1970s. His initiative in founding
A Force in Foreign Policy
George P. Shultz receives the 2012 Henry A. Kissinger Prize

D
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S
/
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/
G
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B
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GEORGE P. SHULTZ AND HENRY A. KISSINGER AT THE AMERICAN ACADEMY, 2010
News from the Hans Arnhold Center | Sketches & Dispatches | N7
Sketches & Dispatches
fact that the institutional decit
of the shared-currency union
must be quickly remedied. Far
tighter economic and political
ties must exist within Europe by
the end of this crisis, far tighter
than anything that has so far
been discussed. Europe also
needs a real nance minister,
someone who has control over
a large part of the tax income.
A powerful joint regulative
authority must also be estab-
lished. The ecb must also receive
a mandate that enables it to
ensure price stability and growth.
There is no avoiding a United
States of Europe. The loose con-
nection of states that exists today
has no future. In that respect, the
US is in a better position.
CICERO: And apart from that?
ROGOFF: Apart from that we have
buried our head deep in the
sand. The level of national debt,
plus the decit of the states and
the local authorities, is higher
than after World War II. And we
havent even taken into account
the pension requirements. The
level of personal debt is also at a
frightfully high level. We are not
experiencing a growth level that
can check these imbalances.
Excerpted from an interview
led by Alexander Marguier
and Til Knipper that
appeared in the March 2012
issue of Cicero. Rogoff was
the spring 2012 Stephen M.
Kellen Distinguished Visitor
at the American Academy.
Translated by Oliver Frost.
Economic Forum in Davos that
Germany in particular should com-
mit more funds to ending the Euro
crisis.
ROGOFF: The situation is without
a doubt very difcult. But one
should not forget that the greatest
mistakes regarding Europe were
made in the late 1980s and early
1990s with the introduction of
the euro plan. When discussing
the euro, I like to use the meta-
phor of a couple who are unsure
whether to get married or not,
and as a dry run, decide to open
an account together. In the begin-
ning everything works pretty
well, but then their siblings and
later their cousins are given
access to the account. In fact, the
euphoria is such that third cous-
ins are also invited to join, whom
no one has ever actually met, but
who are apparently very nice.
Just to have brought France and
Germany together as a couple
would have been have been
very ambitious; instead, even
countries whose average income
was 25 percent lower than the
German average were included.
It was a massive mistake to adopt
a shared currency without form-
ing a real political union at the
same time.
CICERO: We have talked a lot about
Europe, but the US is also facing a
massive debt crisis. Which of the
two is in a worse position?
ROGOFF: Europes problem cer-
tainly must be solved quicker
because we are not only talking
about a debt crisis, but also the
CICERO: Mr. Rogoff, have you ever
considered it a possibility to put
yourself forward as a possible candi-
date for the US presidency?
ROGOFF: No. I think its an incred-
ibly difcult job to do, the pres-
sure is huge, and I dont possess
the necessary political skills. As
an economist I have been advis-
ing politicians for decades, but
the way each profession works is
completely different. If someone
like Peer Steinbrck asks me for
advice, I would spend weeks pre-
paring for a twenty-minute meet-
ing, while for him it would only
be twenty minutes in a packed
agenda.
CICERO: Mr. Steinbrck, the US
elections are currently in full swing.
Do you see it as problematic that
presidential candidates in the
US need an unbelievable amount
of money in order to launch a
campaign?
STEINBRCK: Yes, that represents
a huge difference between the
US and Germany. In Germany
we think its crazy that only very
wealthy people can run for presi-
dent in the US by collecting huge
amounts of donations, which
can lead to dubious political
dependencies.
ROGOFF: The result of this is
that the level of debate in the
US elections has veered from
embarrassing to alarming. None
of the candidates in the US have
the opportunity to say what they
really think. Perhaps I have a
romanticized view of Europe, but
Europe Shares a Bank Account,
Yet Refuses to Get Married
A discussion between economist Kenneth Rogoff and former German nance minister Peer Steinbrck
I have the feeling that politics are
discussed with more seriousness
and honesty here.
STEINBRCK: I was always a great
admirer of the American system
of checks and balances. But it
appears to no longer be work-
ing, due to the fact that different
groups within the Republican
Party have hijacked Republican
ideology. This state of affairs is
crippling American politics. In
Europe we are suffering from a
different phenomenon: the voters
have the impression that there
are no signicant differences
between the political parties.
CICERO: Does it pose a danger to
our Western democracies that in
times of crisis only a select group of
experts are capable of governing?
STEINBRCK: This development
is above all an indication of the
failure of the political classes in
Italy and Greece. The voters have
lost faith in the career politicians
in these places.
ROGOFF: I believe this to be only a
passing phenomenon. The tech-
nocrats have to carry out difcult
nancial restructuring, which no
politician with plans for reelec-
tion wants to go anywhere near.
CICERO: The economic policies of
the German Republic have also
been on the receiving end of some
sharp criticism. Timothy Geithner,
the US secretary of treasury; David
Cameron, the British prime min-
ister; and Christine Lagarde, head
of the imf; all argued at the World
N8 | Sketches & Dispatches | News from the Hans Arnhold Center
from around the world, and by
the August 2003 deadline, we
had received 5,201 ofcial sub-
missions from 62 nations, and
from 49 American states (only
Alaska was missing from the
list). In January 2004, after six
months of exhausting, occasion-
ally tortured debate and discus-
sion, we announced our win-
ning selection in Federal Hall
on Wall Street, where George
Washington took his oath as
Americas rst president.
The winning design,
Reecting Absence, by
Michael Arad and Peter Walker,
proposed two deeply recessed
voids in the footprints of the
former World Trade Center
towers, each nearly 65 square
meters, with thin veils of water
cascading into reecting pools
some 10 meters below, each
jury that chose Peter Eisenmans
design for the Berlin Denkmal
(for Europes Murdered Jews),
it seems that youve basically
chosen just another Holocaust
memorial. Is this true?
Surprised and somewhat offend-
ed, I replied that obviously this
design had nothing to do with
Holocaust memorials.
Here the same reporter
pressed me further: But is it
possible that Jewish architects
are somehow predisposed
toward articulating the memory
of catastrophe in their work?
Would this explain how Daniel
Libeskind (original site designer
of the new World Trade Center
complex), Santiago Calatrava
(designer of the new Fulton
Street Transit Center abut-
ting Ground Zero in lower
Manhattan), and now Michael
Arad (designer of the Memorial)
have become the architects of
with a further deep void in its
middle. The pools were to be
surrounded by an abacus grid
of trees (even rows when viewed
west to east, random groves
when viewed north to south),
which would deepen the vol-
umes of the voids as they grew,
even as they softened the hard,
square edges of the pools. This
memorial would indeed reect
absence, even as it commemo-
rated the lives lost with living,
regenerating ora.
Until that day in January
2004, the Memorial jurors were
not allowed to speak to the press.
Now, for the rst time since
our appointment nine months
earlier, we could take questions.
The rst question I took from a
reporter caught me off-balance.
Knowing that you have written
much about Holocaust negative-
form monuments in Germany
and that you were also on the
record in post-9/11 downtown
Manhattan? I had to concede
that while I saw no direct refer-
ences to Jewish catastrophe
in these designs for the recon-
struction of lower Manhattan,
it could also be true that the
forms of postwar architecture
have been inected by an entire
generations knowledge of the
Holocaust. Michael Arad and
Peter Walkers Reecting
Absence is not a Holocaust
memorial, I said, but its formal
preoccupation with loss, absence,
and regeneration may well be
informed by Holocaust memory.
As I continued to mull my
answer, I began to imagine an
arc of memorial forms over the
last fty years or so and how, in
fact, post-World War I and World
War II memorials had evolved
along a very discernible path,
all with visual and conceptual
echoes of their predecessors.
The Memorial Arc
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News from the Hans Arnhold Center | Sketches & Dispatches | N9
Here I recalled that counter-
memorial artists and architects
such as Horst Hoheisel, Jochen
Gerz and Esther Shalev-Gerz,
and Daniel Libeskind (among
many others) all told me that
Maya Lins design for the
Vietnam Veterans Monument
broke the mold that made their
own counter-memorial work
possible. And here I remem-
bered that Maya Lin had also
openly acknowledged her own
debt to both Sir Edwin Lutyenss
Memorial to the Missing of the
Somme (1924) in Thiepval,
France; and to Georges-Henri
Pingussons Memorial to the
Martyrs of the Deportation
(1962) on the le de la Cit in
Paris. Both are precursors to
the negative-form realized so
brilliantly by Lin, both articula-
tions of uncompensated loss and
absence, represented by carved-
out pieces of landscape, as well
as by the visitors descent down-
ward (and inward) into memory,
their revulsion against tradition-
ally authoritarian, complacent,
and self-certain national shrines.
Preoccupied with absence
and irredeemable loss, and with
a broken and irreparable world,
German artists and architects
would now arrive at their own,
counter-memorial architectural
vernacular that could express the
breach in their faith in civiliza-
tion without mending it.
In Germany, the questions
had been: How to commemo-
rate the mass murder of Jews
perpetrated in the national
name without redeeming this
destruction? How to formally
articulate this terrible loss, this
terrible void, without lling it
in with consoling meaning? In
post-9/11 New York, our memo-
rial question was: How to com-
memorate and articulate the
loss of nearly 3,000 lives at the
hands of terrorists and, at the
same time, to create a memo-
rial site for ongoing life and
as described by Lin in her archi-
tectural memoir Boundaries.
Carved into the ground, a
black wound in the landscape
and an explicit counterpoint to
Washingtons prevailing white,
neo-classical obelisks and statu-
ary, Maya Lins design articulated
loss without redemption, and
formalized a national ambiva-
lence surrounding the memory
of American soldiers sent to ght
and die in a war the country now
abhorred. In Maya Lins words,
she imagined taking a knife and
cutting into the earth, opening
it up, an initial violence and pain
that in time would heal. That is,
she opened a space in the land-
scape that would open a space
within us for memory.
After the dedication of Lins
Vietnam Veterans Monument
in 1982, it was as if German art-
ists had also found their own
uniquely contrarian memorial
vernacular for the expression of
their own national shame, for
regeneration? In Michael Arad
and Peter Walkers design, we
found both the stark expressions
of irreparable loss in the voids,
and the consoling, regenerative
forms of life in the surrounding
trees. The fuller and taller the
trees grow, the deeper the vol-
umes of the voids become. In the
National September 11 Memorial
at Ground Zero, the memorial
expressions of loss and regenera-
tion are now built into each other.
Each denes the other.
James E. Young is a
Distinguished Professor
at the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst,
and director of the Institute
for Holocaust, Genocide,
and Memory Studies. On
December 9, 2011, he deliv-
ered the keynote speech at
Memorial Mania, a sym-
posium sponsored by the
American Academy and the
Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
O
n a recent mild March
evening, an American
literary legend strolled
through the doors of the
American Academy, one who
has made over thirty appear-
ances on the Tonight Show with
Johnny Carson, penned countless
articles for the New Yorker, the
Nation, and Time over forty years,
made a name as one of Americas
most beloved food writers, and
who remains, of course, the only
deadline poet in America.
The venerable Calvin
Trillin spoke at the American
Academy as the 2012 Richard
C. Holbrooke Distinguished
Visitor, delivering an uproari-
ously funny lecture in front of a
packed house of fellow journal-
ists, Academy fellows and trust-
ees, and assorted fans. His talk,
A Travelling Mans America,
ranged in topics from his poor
trips across the country I used to
take with my family as a child. I
grew up in Kansas City, which is
what the real estate people would
call equally convenient to either
coast. We usually went west. My
father would be in the front seat,
pointing out buttes and mesas, and
my sister, Sukey, and I would be in
the back, protecting our territory.
We had an invisible line in the cen-
ter of the seat. At least, Sukey said
it was the center.
There were constant border
tensions. It was sort of like the
border between Finland and the
old Soviet Union. I played Finland.
Sukey played the Soviet Union.
Then my father did something
that we now know was politically
retrograde and maybe antifemi-
nist. He told me, We do not hit
girls. You will never hit your sister
again. Sukey was not visited with
a similar injunction. So I became
foreign language skills to Berlin
looking pretty much the same as
the last time he was here, in 1958
(There was no Wall then and
theres no Wall now), to the cur-
rent gop race. Trillin concluded
with a more serious discussion
about the state of American
newspapers, Internet journal-
ism, and his long tenure through
four regimes at the New Yorker
(he began as staff writer in 1963),
as well as his life and times at
the Nation.
Trillin sprinkled the talk
with vignettes from his most
recent and acclaimed anthology,
Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin,
published by Random House
in September 2011. He riffed
on an opening piece called
Geography, originally penned
in 1988:
I think my interest in geography
grew from the long automobile
a unilaterally disarmed Finland,
while she was a Soviet Union bris-
tling with weaponry. If I hadnt
had to be on constant alert because
of Sukeys expansionist backseat
policy, I might know the difference
between a butte and a mesa.
Trillin was in residence at
the American Academy until
April 1, 2012, spending time
with Academy fellows, visiting
Berlins local eateries (sampling
such delicacies as Berlins
famed dner), and continuing to
observe the places and people
around him with a dash of good
ribbing, as he has for the last
fty years. To hear Trillin on the
town, and for a vicarious taste of
currywurst with the seasoned
humorist, you can tune in to the
Academys spring 2012 National
Public Radio show, available for
streaming from the Academy
website. r.j.m.
A Travelling Mans America
Not quite enough of Calvin Trillin
N10 | Sketches & Dispatches | News from the Hans Arnhold Center
Redening German Health Care
A Harvard Business School luminary on healing Germanys ailing health policy
H
ealth care is a hot
topic and often a divi-
sive one in Europe
and America today. Harvard
University Business School pro-
fessor Michael Porters new book,
Redening German Health Care:
Moving to a Value-Based System
(co-authored by Clemens Guth;
Springer, 2012) lays out an action
agenda to move Germany to a
high-value system, including a
comprehensive, coherent strat-
egy to reform the entire system.
Porter and Guth conducted their
study because, as they see it, the
German health care system is
on a collision course with budget
realities: costs are high and ris-
ing, and quality problems are
becoming increasingly appar-
ent. In the book, Porter argues
that care must be reorganized
around patients and their medi-
cal conditions, providers must
compete around the outcomes
they achieve, health plans must
take an active role in improving
subscriber health, and payment
must be shifted to models that
reward excellent providers. Last
but not least, private insurance
must be integrated in the risk-
pooling system.
During his provocative talk
at the Hotel Adlon, Porter dem-
onstrated that moving to a value-
based health care system is the
only way forward for Germany if
the country wants to continue to
ensure access to excellent health
care for everyone. He discussed
his ndings with one of the most
prominent experts on German
health policy, Dr. Karl Lauterbach,
director of the Institute of
Health Economy and Clinical
Epidemiology at the University
of Cologne and adjunct professor
at the Harvard School of Public
Health. Lauterbach is also an
SPD member of the Bundestag
and frequently appears as
a health-care expert on the
German talk-show circuit. In
addition to his well-attended
lecture, Porter also held a foreign
policy forum luncheon at the
American Academy, kindly spon-
sored by Daimler-Fonds. r.j.m.
A Lasting Legacy
The National Gallery in the new century
renovate the building that would
house the pieces. But Mellon also
insisted that the museum should
not bear his name. It was, rather,
to be the peoples collection and
free to the public, governed by
a secret board of trustees made
up of private and public gures.
Roosevelt was thrilled, and the
bill was approved in an Act of
Congress, which still guarantees
funding for all of the National
Gallerys operations.
John Russell Pope then
designed the Beaux-Arts build-
ing, which began construction
in 1936, and is today linked via
an underground tunnel to the
East Wing, designed by I.M.
Pei in 1978. At the main struc-
tures opening, in 1941, Powell
said, there were more guards
than paintings. The Gallerys
collection, after years of careful
curation, traces the development
of Western art from the Middle
Ages to the present, including
the only painting by Leonardo
da Vinci in the Americas. When
the fabric samples were delivered
for the walls of the Renaissance
section of the gallery, the rst
director, David E. Finley, wrote to
Mellon to say that the fabric was a
bit on the expensive side. I dont
care how expensive it is, Mellon
replied, so long as it doesnt
look it.
Powell then ran through the
pretty picture part of the lecture,
as he put it, showing slides of
some of the National Gallerys
most impressive holdings: works
by Raphael, Rembrandt, Titian,
Rubens, and Watteau, among
others. Additional collections
added to the National Gallery
include major works of art donat-
ed by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon
Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald,
Peter Arrell Brown Widener,
Joseph E. Widener, and Chester
Dale, bringing, with the inclu-
sion of Van Gogh and Picasso,
among others, the collection into
the twentieth century. These
gifts form what the National
Gallery calls the founding
collection. r.j.m.
O
n Tuesday, April 17,
Earl A. Powell, III, direc-
tor of the National Gallery
of Art and the inaugural Marina
Kellen French Distinguished
Visitor, was introduced to the
American Academy by French
herself. An expert in nineteenth
and twentieth century European
and American art, Powell has
been at the Gallerys helm since
1992, subsequent to positions at
the University of Texas and his
directorship of the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art.
At the lecture, attended by
heads of art museums from
across Germany, Powell shed
light on Andrew Mellons legacy,
describing how the Pittsburgh
nancier and energy baron, who
also served as secretary of the
treasury under three presidents,
conceived of and nanced the
National Gallery at its conceptual
outset, in the 1920s. During his
ambassadorship to the Court of
St. James, in London, Mellon was
inspired by the idea of a national
gallery. He presented the idea to
President Roosevelt, saying that
he would donate his private col-
lection and provide the funds to
MARINA KELLEN FRENCH AND EARL RUSTY POWELL
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News from the Hans Arnhold Center | Life & Letters | N11
Life & Letters
KAREN J. ALTER
International law is primarily an
idea, says Karen J. Alter, and
international courts are a leap
of faith. For Alter, a professor
of political science and law at
Northwestern and this semes-
ters Bosch Public Policy Fellow,
the creation of international
courts represents the belief that
having a legal body to enforce
international legal agreements
will make these agreements
more substantively meaningful.
Sometimes this actually happens.
Im interested in understanding
when and how this occurs. Alter
aims to complete her latest book,
The New Terrain of International
Law: International Courts in
O
n my first day at the
American Academy,
I nished a draft of What
We Talk About When We Talk
About Anne Frank (Knopf, 2012).
Of course, I would go on to n-
ish it many more times, in the
way we nish any kind of writ-
ing. I also began the short story
Free Fruit for Young Widows at
Wannsee.
The Holocaust themes in
the book were surely informed
by sitting in the Hans Arnhold
Center, originally built by a
Jewish banker and then taken
over by the Nazi minister of
nance. To be in the house with
all those ghosts, both good and
evil, in a place thats so lovely
International Politics, during her
time at the Academy.
Alter is the author of The
European Courts Political
Power: Essays on the Inuence
of the European Court of Justice
on European Politics (Oxford
University Press, 2009) and
Establishing the Supremacy of
European Law: The Making of
an International Rule of Law in
Europe (Oxford University Press,
2001), and has published articles
in International Organization,
Comparative Political Studies,
and International Affairs, among
others. Alters research has been
supported by the John Simon
Guggenheim Foundation, the
Howard Foundation, the German
and peaceful, to be across the
lake from where the Nazi confer-
ence took place . . . I remember
sitting in the library and look-
ing out across the lake with all
these thoughts. As a kid who
was raised Orthodox although
Im not religious now it was
interesting to contemplate the
reasoning behind the high ideals
of having an American Academy.
Theres nothing more loaded
than being on Lake Wannsee,
and of all the museums in the
world, the Wannsee Conference
House was the most chilling,
most intense, and the best curat-
ed of any Holocaust museum
Ive been to, because you just
saw how things happened in a
Marshall Fund, the daad, and
the Bourse Chateaubriand
Scientique. She is a member
of the New York Council on
Foreign Relations, an associate
scholar at the Center for Law and
Globalization at the American
Bar Foundation, serves on the
editorial board of Law and Social
Inquiry, and is co-editor of the
forthcoming Oxford Handbook on
International Adjudication.
CHARLES BRIGHT AND
MICHAEL E. GEYER
Over the past thirty years, Charles
Bright and Michael E. Geyer have
extensively published, theorized,
and taught courses on the history
of globalization. Theyre con-
beautiful room overlooking a
lake. In Berlin, I felt everyone
was so respectful in acknowl-
edging the citys history while
also acknowledging the living,
vibrant nature of the city. I really
came to love the city deeply. I feel
very connected to the place. I was
constantly meeting people, other
than Jews, who remembered the
Holocaust the way an Orthodox
traditional Jew would want it to
be remembered even though
its nearly a hundred years later.
The fact that it was living on
in the heads of the young people
I met, the way it was living on
in my head, astonished me. It
made me think, looking out at
the lake, sketching the rst lines
tinuing this collaboration at the
Academy, in order to re-narrate
stories which no longer quite
work, according to Geyer. The
two will work on a book entitled
The Global Condition in the Long
Twentieth Century.
Charles Bright is a historian
trained in European military and
geopolitical history, and the direc-
tor of the University of Michigans
Residential College. The Ellen
Maria Gorrissen Fellow has also
been active in the arts, teaching
on theater and politics in interwar
Germany, underwriting a series
of plays by Bertolt Brecht, and
working with Detroit-area theater
companies. He has published two
books, The Powers that Punish:
and ideas of stories if I want to
engage in these ideas, they are
mine to engage with, and they
can be innitely engaged with. If
this is what obsesses you, then
be so obsessed.
Being at the Academy really
changed the way I work. I was a
coffee shop writer my whole life,
but at the Academy, for the rst
time ever, I got used to working
where I lived. It was a little bit
like an Edward Gorey draw-
ing; I would pace around, and
there were days and days where
I didnt leave the house. I think
a whole week went by without
me exiting the gates, I was work-
ing so hard, really hammering
away. as told to b.l. s.
Proles in Scholarship
Presenting the spring 2012 fellows and distinguished visitors
Innite Engagement
Nathan Englander on writing in Berlin
N12 | Life & Letters | News from the Hans Arnhold Center
Prison and Politics in the Era of the
Big House, 19201955 (University
of Michigan Press, 1996) and,
with Susan Harding, Statemaking
and Social Movements, (University
of Michigan Press, 1984), and has
published widely in journals and
anthologies.
Michael E. Geyer is the
Samuel N. Harper Professor of
German and European History
and the faculty director of the
Human Rights Program at
the University of Chicago. The
Axel Springer Fellows recent
publications include Beyond
Totalitarianism: Stalinism and
Nazism Compared, edited with
Sheila Fitzpatrick (Cambridge
University Press, 2009), and
A Shattered Past: Reconstructing
German Histories, written with
Konrad Jarausch (Princeton
University Press, 2002). Geyer
has received awards from the
John Simon Guggenheim
Foundation, the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, the
Humboldt Forschungspreis, and
the American Academy in Berlin,
where he was a Daimler Chrysler
Fellow in spring 2004. This
semester, Geyer is the inaugural
senior fellow at the Academy.
Nominated to the Academys
Board of Trustees in 2004, Geyer
is recused from the board during
his fellowship.
LELAND DE LA DURANTAYE
Holtzbrinck Fellow Leland de
la Durantaye, in a manner that
any method actor would admire,
will spend his time in Germany
examining Samuel Becketts
own afnity with the German
culture and language, within de
la Durantayes larger Academy
book project, Wrterstrmerei im
Namen der Schnheit, or World
and Work in Samuel Beckett. More
broadly, the project will examine
Becketts art through the lens of
the Irish writers own poetics, as
enunciated most recently in the
newly published Letters.
De la Durantaye is the Gardner
Cowles Associate Professor of
English at Harvard University,
and has written numerous works
on the subject of nineteenth- and
twentieth-century literature and
aesthetics in a variety of publica-
tions, and his books are Giorgio
Agamben: A Critical Introduction
(Stanford University Press,
2009) and Style is Matter: The
Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov
(Cornell University Press, 2007).
His awards, fellowships, and
special recognitions include
several fellowships from Cornell
University, where he received
his master and doctoral degrees,
as well as fellowships from
the Woodrow Wilson Center,
Harvard Universitys Department
of Comparative Literature,
the Deutscher Akademischer
Austauschdienst, the American
Academy in Rome, and the
Fulbright Program.
RICHARD DEMING
This semesters John P. Birkelund
Fellow is one of the enviable few
who moves seamlessly between
the creative and academic worlds.
In his verse and theory, Deming
explores the intersections of
poetry, philosophy, and visual
culture. At the Academy, he will
work on the completion of two
books, Everyday Domain: The
Ordinary in Art, Film, Philosophy
and Poetry: Day for Night. The
rst aims to reveal the ongoing
philosophicality, interpreta-
tion, and imagination that are
experienced in the ordinary and
everyday. For his second book,
Deming will compile a collection
of poems that raise questions
central to discovering what we are
doing when we attempt to express
the selfs relationship to others
through language and visual
metaphors.
Deming is the author of
Listening on All Sides: Toward
an Emersonian Ethics of Reading
(Stanford University Press, 2008).
His collection of poems, Lets Not
Call It Consequence (Shearsman,
2008), received the 2009 Norma
Farber Award from the Poetry
Society of America. Deming
contributes to a variety of maga-
zines, such as Artforum and the
Boston Review, and his works
have appeared in Sulfur, Field,
Indiana Review, and the Nation
among others. He teaches at Yale
University.
MARTIN DIMITROV
Martin Dimitrov is thrilled to
be back in Berlin; the last time
he was here was 1988, when his
only view of West Berlin, as a
Bulgarian citizen, was from the
TV Tower. When he is not making
up for lost time, the Academys
second Axel Springer Fellow will
dedicate himself to his book pro-
ject Dictatorship and Information:
Autocratic Regime Resilience in
Communist Europe and China,
which focuses on the puzzling
longevity of communist single-
party regimes. Based on archival
evidence from China and Eastern
Europe, Dimitrov explores how
communist regimes manage the
problem of information scarcity
by creating institutions for col-
lecting information.
Dimitrov is an associate
professor of political science
at Tulane University. He is the
author of Piracy and the State:
The Politics of Intellectual Property
Rights in China (Cambridge
University Press, 2009).
Dimitrov received his PhD in
political science from Stanford
University and was previously
an assistant professor of govern-
ment at Dartmouth College. He
has been awarded fellowships
from the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars;
the Institute for Advanced
Study at the University of Notre
Dame; the Center on Democracy,
Development, and the Rule of Law
at Stanford; the Davis Center for
Russian and Eurasian Studies at
Harvard; and the Fairbank Center
for Chinese Studies at Harvard.
AVERY GORDON
During her time at the Academy,
sociologist and Anna-Maria
Kellen Fellow Avery Gordon will
embark on a collaborative effort
with Berlin-based artist Ines
Schaber. The two will be focus-
ing on the former monastery
and prison of Breitenau, creating
a multimedia installation for
documenta (13). Gordon will
contribute a small notebook to
the publication series 100 Notes
100 Thoughts that explores
imprisonment as a technology
of enclosure in which unwanted
people and threatening ideas are
conned.
Gordon is a professor of socio-
logy at the University of California
Santa Barbara and visiting faculty
fellow at the Center for Research
Architecture at the University
of London. She is the author of
Ghostly Matters: Haunting and
the Sociological Imagination
(University of Minnesota
Press, 2008), Keeping Good
Time: Reections on Knowledge,
Power, and People (Paradigm
Publishers, 2004), and the co-
editor of Mapping Multiculturalism
(University of Minnesota Press,
1996) and Body Politics (Westview,
1994). Recent scholarly publica-
tions have appeared in South
Atlantic Quarterly, Race & Class,
PMLA, and others. Since 1997,
Gordon is also the Keeper of the
Hawthorne Archives.
ANNIE GOSFIELD
During her Berlin Prize in Music
Composition Fellowship, Annie
Goseld will compose Messages
Personnels, a concert-length
piece for a large ensemble. The
piece will draw inspiration from
resistance groups in World
War II and reference the secret
messages known as Messages
Personnels, surreal spoken
texts and music broadcasts.
Goseld will conduct further
research into the Resistance and
German encryption and radio
transmission. She will also have
the opportunity to develop a new
work with cellist Frances-Marie
Uitti, write a piece for violinist
George Kentros, and compose
new work for piano and electron-
ics in honor of the 150th anniver-
sary of Debussys birth.
Dedicated to working closely
with performers, Goseld has
created new works in close
collaboration with musicians
including ex-Kronos cellist Joan
Jeanrenaud, pianist Lisa Moore,
cellist Felix Fan, the Bang on a
Can All-Stars, and the Athelas
Sinfonietta. Large-scale compo-
sitions include EWA7, Floating
Messages and Fading Frequencies,
and Daughters of the Industrial
Revolution. Her recent fellow-
ships include the Foundation
for Contemporary Arts, the
McKnight Foundation, the New
York Foundation for the Arts,
and the Siemens Foundation.
Goseld was the Milhaud
Professor of composition at Mills
College in 2003 and 2005, a
visiting lecturer at Princeton
University in 2007, and a visiting
artist at Cal Arts in 1999.
LESLIE HEWITT
For this semesters Guna S.
Mundheim Fellow in the Visual
Arts, photography, lm, sculp-
ture, and site-specic installa-
tions are ways to explore con-
cepts of time and the interaction
or collision of historical and
personal memory. Working
with cinematographer Bradford
Young and producer Karin Chien,
Hewitt plans to take advantage of
her time in Berlin by exploring
the African American experience
in Germany and Germanys own
visual engagement with its past.
Hewitt graduated from Cooper
Unions School of Art in 2000
and went on to earn an mfa
from Yale University in 2004.
From 20012003, she pursued
Africana studies and cultural
studies at New York University.
Hewitt has held residencies at the
Studio Museum in Harlem, the
Museum of Fine Arts Houston,
Project Row Houses, and the
Skowhegan School of Painting
and Sculpture, among oth-
ers. Her work is in the public
collection at the Museum of
Modern Art in New York, the
Guggenheim Museum, the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art,
the Walker Art Center, and Yale
Art Gallery, among others.
PETER L. LINDSETH
Peter Lindseth studies the
comparative and historical evo-
lution of law governing public
bureaucracy. He is particularly
fascinated, he says, by how to
reconcile conceptions of repre-
sentative government with the
reality of modern administrative
governance. The Olimpiad S.
Ioffe Professor of International
and Comparative Law at the
University of Connecticut will
be pursuing such questions over
the spring semester, while aim-
ing to elaborate a specic histo-
riographical perspective on the
relationship of legal, institutional,
and social change in the mod-
ern nation-state. The Daimler
Fellows project is entitled
Democracy and Administration
in the North Atlantic World.
Lindseth holds a JD from
Cornell and PhD from Columbia
in European history. His books
include Power and Legitimacy:
Reconciling Europe and the Nation-
State (Oxford University Press,
2010), Comparative Administrative
Law (Edward Elgar Publishing,
2010), Administrative Law of
the European Union: Oversight
(aba Publishing, 2008),
and Transatlantic Regulatory
Cooperation: Legal Problems
and Political Prospects (Oxford
University Press, 2000). Lindseth
has served as a visiting profes-
sor at Yale Law School, as a
fellow and visiting professor at
Princeton University, and as a
Research Scholar and Associate
Director of the European Legal
Studies Center at Columbia Law
School. In Europe, Lindseth has
been a visiting fellow at the Max
THE SPRING 2012 CLASS OF FELLOWS (LEFT TO RIGHT): MARTIN DIMITROV, AVERY GORDON, RICHARD DEMING, MICHAEL GEYER,
INGA MARKOVITS, PETER L. LINDSETH, LESLIE HEWITT, CHARLES BRIGHT, M. NORMAN WISE, ANNIE GOSFIELD, AND KAREN RUSSELL
(NOT PICTURED: LELAND DE LA DURANTAYE)

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N14 | Life & Letters | News from the Hans Arnhold Center
Planck Institute for European
Legal History in Frankfurt, a Jean
Monnet Fellow at the Robert
Schuman Center for Advanced
Studies, and a lecturer at the
Academy of European Law, both
at the European University
Institute in Florence, Italy.
INGA MARKOVITS
Lawyers do not make good
Christians, said Martin Luther,
because they were born to be
doubters, not believers. For this
same reason, Inga Markovits
reasons, lawyers do not make
good Socialists, either. Often,
lawyers in the GDR were seen as
closet capitalists by the regime.
After the fall of the Wall, however,
these lawyers were greeted with
equal suspicion by the newly
unied republic, who saw them
as aiders and abettors of a dic-
tatorial regime. Markovits, the
Friends of Jamail Regents Chair
in Law at the University of Texas
School of Law, is fascinated by
what role law can play in a totali-
tarian system. To this end, the
Ellen Maria Gorrissen Fellow will
be researching the law faculty
of Berlins Humboldt University
during the years of East German
Socialism.
Markovits is an internationally
renowned expert in comparative
law. Her research has concentrat-
ed on socialist legal regimes, law
reform in Eastern Europe, and
the comparison of legal cultures
in general. Markovits has been a
fellow at the Center for Advanced
Studies in the Behavioral
Sciences at Stanford University
and a visiting scholar at the
Zentrum fr Zeithistorische
Forschung in Potsdam, Germany.
Her books include Justice in
Lritz (Princeton University
Press, 2010; German edition:
Gerechtigkeit in Lritz, C.H. Beck,
2006), Imperfect Justice (Oxford
University Press, 1995; German
edition: Die Abwicklung: Ein
Tagebuch zum Ende der ddr-Justiz
(Beck, 1993), and Sozialistisches
und brgerliches Zivilrechtsdenken
in der ddr (Verlag Wissenschaft
und Politik, 1969).
KAREN RUSSELL
Long before this semesters Mary
Ellen von der Heyden Fiction
Fellow arrived in Berlin, she was
drawn to the German Wald in the
dark fantasy tales of the Brothers
Grimm. Russells home state of
Florida boasts the same swampy
geography that once character-
ized Berlin, and this landscape,
she says, strongly evokes Freuds
notion of the uncanny in its
alien and familiar nature. This
semester, Russell will work on
her second collection of genre-
bending short stories, in which
she seeks to fuse contemporary
reality with fantasy, history with
myth, blood-pumping mysteries
with philosophical riddles, and
suspense with wonder.
Karen Russell is a visiting
professor of creative writing
at Bryn Mawr College. Her
stories have been featured in
The Best American Short Stories,
Conjunctions, Granta, New
Yorker, Oxford American, and
Zoetrope. She was featured in the
New Yorkers ction issue and
on their 20 Under 40 list, was
chosen as one of Grantas Best
Young American Novelists, and
was the 2005 recipient of the
Transatlantic Review/Heneld
Foundation Award. Her rst
book of short stories, St. Lucys
Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
(2006), earned her recognition
as a National Book Foundation
5 Under 35 honoree. Her second
book, Swamplandia! (2011), was
shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize
and longlisted for the Orange
Prize. She also won the Bard
Fiction Prize in 2011. Russell
has taught ction and literature
at Columbia University, Bard
College, and Williams College.
M. NORTON WISE
M. Norton Wise enjoys investigat-
ing behind the scenes of Berlins
great landscape gardens, focus-
ing his attention not only on the
dramatic fountains, streams,
and lakes, but also on the steam
engines that once powered such
Wasserkunst. A study of these
engines, says Wise, is also a study
of industrialization over the
course of the nineteenth century.
Together with his collabora-
tor, Elaine Wise, the Berthold
Leibinger Fellow will continue
working on his book Gardens
of Steam: Projecting Industrial
Culture into the Berlin Landscape.
Wise is a Distinguished
Professor of History at the
University of California, Los
Angeles, and co-director of the
UCLA Center for Society and
Genetics. With co-author Crosbie
Smith, Wise wrote Energy and
Empire: A Biographical Study of
Lord Kelvin (Cambridge University
Press, 1989). His series Work
and Waste: Political Economy and
Natural Philosophy in 19th Century
Britain developed the point further
to show how the steam engine
functioned as an active mediator
between industrial and scien-
tic interests. On a broader scale,
the edited volume The Values of
Precision explored the themes of
quantication, trustworthiness of
numerical data, role of the profes-
sions, and relations between sci-
ence and technology.
D
aniel Albright, who
teaches comparative liter-
ature, English, and music
at Harvard University, will inves-
tigate a central question of the
comparative arts: are there many
different arts, or is there simply
one art, which variously takes the
form of a poem, painting, musi-
cal composition, or building?
David Bollier, co-founder
of the Commons Strategies
Group, will pursue a strategy
memorandum, Formulating a
Template of Action for the Global
Commons Movement; Peter
Constantine will translate
fty stories by Mikhail Bulgakov;
Visual artist Richard Hawkins
will research historical scrapbook
and collage material at selected
Berlin museums as he continues
work on his own art; Jonathan
Laurence, a political scientist
at Boston College, will research
German approaches to integra-
tion; Batrice Longuenesse,
a professor of philosophy at New
York University, plans to continue
her investigation of self-con-
sciousness in connection with our
use of the rst-person pronoun
I; Heather McGowan will be
writing her third novel, about a
group of people connected by the
illegal trade of cultural artifacts;
philosopher Dean Moyar from
Johns Hopkins University will
address a question fundamental
to modern liberal democracy:
how should we conceive of the
moral core of our political institu-
tions? Celina Su from the City
University of New York will high-
light the performative aspects
of youth participation in policy-
making and community develop-
ment; Daniel Tiffany, profes-
sor of English and comparative
literature at the University of
Southern California, plans to exca-
vate poetrys forgotten relation-
ship to the origins of kitsch; Hans
Vaget of Smith College will write
a book about the life and works of
Thomas Mann during his US exile
years; and Princeton Universitys
Michael Wachtel will be writ-
ing the rst biography the Russian
polymath Viacheslav Ivanov.
Sneak Preview
This fall welcomes another outstanding class of fellows to the Hans Arnhold Center
JULIE MEHRETU (ARTIST)
Poetry of Sappho
(Translated by John Daley with
Page duBois)
Arion, November 2011
W.J.T. MITCHELL
Seeing Through Race
Harvard University Press,
May 2012
SUSAN SONTAG
Edited by David Rieff,
As Consciousness Is Harnessed
to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks,
19641980
Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
April 2012
R. JAY MAGILL
In July 2012 W.W. Norton will
publish American Academy
colleague R. Jay Magills
Sincerity: How a moral ideal
born ve hundred years ago
inspired religious wars, modern
art, hipster chic, and the curious
notion that we all have some-
thing to say (no matter how dull)
(Book design by Susanna
Dulkinys)
Alumni Books
New releases by Academy fellows
MYRA MARX FERREE
Varieties of Feminism: German
Gender Politics in Global
Perspective
Stanford University Press,
March 2012
CAROLINE FOHLIN
Mobilizing Money: How the
Worlds Richest Nations Financed
Industrial Growth
Cambridge University Press,
December 2011
JONATHAN FRANZEN
Farther Away: Essays
Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
April 2012
HA JIN
Nanjing Requiem
Pantheon, October 2011
KATHERINE BOO
Behind the Beautiful Forevers:
Life, Death, and Hope in
a Mumbai Undercity
Random House, February 2012
DANIEL BOYARIN
The Jewish Gospels
The New Press, April 2012
DEREK CHOLLET AND
SAMANTHA POWERS
The Unquiet American: Richard
Holbrooke in the World
PublicAffairs, November 2011
STANLEY CORNGOLD
Kaf ka for the 21st Century
(co-edited with Ruth V. Gross)
Camden House, October 2011
ASTRID M. ECKERT
The Struggle for the Files - The
Western Allies and the Return of
German Archives after the Second
World War
Cambridge University Press,
February 2012
NATHAN ENGLANDER
What We Talk About When We
Talk About Anne Frank: Stories
Knopf, February 2012
NATHAN ENGLANDER
(TRANSLATOR) AND JONATHAN
SAFRAN FOER (EDITOR)
New American Haggadah
Little, Brown and Company,
March 2012
N16 | Private Initiative Public Outreach | News from the Hans Arnhold Center
Private Initiative Public Outreach
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Witten, Pauline Yu
THE SPONGE DIVERS
OF NEW KALYMNOS
Unlidding a galaxy
By Karen Russell
The following is an excerpt from a short
story in Karen Russells forthcoming
collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove.
I
t was dark and wet on the day of
the Skandalopetra Ceremony. The
tents sagged with puddled rain. The
interior of the central tent felt like an ant-
hill dozens of women in black dresses
and heels scurrying around holding big
white pieces of cake. The Greek citizenry of
New Kalymnos, Florida, got duded up for
a Ceremony. Even the babies were wearing
pants it was that kind of fancy. The babies
frowned out of their old-style perambula-
tors in doll-sized coats and ties and ruby
loafers that looked like polished acorns,
their expressions equal in confusion to
those of the oldest men.
Tazi elbowed me. Inside the tent you
could see these blue hyphens of light-
ashes. Tiny nicks in the darkness. It was
just the other boys, I realized, working their
knives. The initiates sat separately from
their families at two long tables. We moved
towards the frozen waves of our friends
combed heads bent over their plates, the
high-luster foods piled on tables: honeyed
hams, black olives. A question for past
generations of New Kalymnoss moms:
why so many hams? Who thought the
ham:boy ratio at these functions needed to
be one:one? The ceremony always seemed
plenty grim to me already. What I remem-
ber about our last meal as boys was saw-
ing at my personal ham for what felt like
centuries. It looked like a big st, covered
in scalloped mail, sitting at the end of my
puny arm like an Olympic graft that didnt
take. After dinner we were due to become
amphibious: not just boys in our dry beds
any longer, but men, divers. Everybody
was nervous, jumping the tables with their
knees, breathing funny, as if already we
were diving off the boats into the sea.
Fifty-four sons from the sponge-shing
village of New Kalymnos were receiving
their skandalopetra from the sea priest
that night. We had all turned thirteen in
the past twelve months we were all in the
same grade except for Yorga, whod been
held back twice. My twin brother Tazi and
I, born May 12, had just made the cut-off
for this years Ceremony. The skandalop-
etra came from a local limestone quarry:
a slab of greeny-white rock, 8 kilograms,
that mainlanders visiting New Kalymnos
frequently mistook for tombstones. These
were our diving stones. Privately Tazi and
I decided that wed gotten the best two
skandalopetra. Nestor Rekkis stone had
this sort of rash-looking thing on it, like a
weird blue acne. And Tonys stone was cut
as crookedly as his nose. We felt very sorry
for our friends. We hallucinated shadows
of blemishes on their rocks, big chips. With
our eyes, we agreed not to tell the other
boys.
You are divers now, the mothers of New
Kalymnos insisted, adjusting our ties. You
are not boys!
Thank you, Tazi and I kept belching up
at them. We were drinking soda and wine.
Our loafers were pinching our feet so we
removed them. Somehow I had managed
to get blue cake icing on one of my big toes.
I stared down at my bare, rabbity feet every
time a woman approached us.
In some ways the Skandalopetra
Ceremony seems so very strange how
do you become a diver on land? It seemed
this milestone should have been inaugu-
rated in the sea caves themselves instead
of in fairground tents next to the dull gold
and purple hat of the St. Peter and Paul
Cathedral. (Have you ever noticed the
architectural similarity between the shape
of priests hats and the shape of the cathe-
drals? All these papal guys with cones
on their heads, blessing us inside the
cone-shaped cupolas? Its like a chicken-
and-the-egg type thing, I guess or did
one design come rst?) Tomorrow, each
of us would row out on a sponging boat,
tie these stones around our bellies, and
dive with our harvesting bags and rakes
into the sea. The best sponges were off
Twelve-Mile Reef, growing on a sandbar
grubstaked by Captain Skupin. Divers
plummeted down to the sea oor on a
single breath to collect them. The stone
dragged you down, and afterwards you
signaled the men on the boat to haul you
up. Your lungs and your sponge bag burst-
ing. One full bag of sponges earned a diver
one dollar, after the captain took his cut.
I had been swimming in the waters of
New Kalymnos since my infancy, practi-
cally, but I was frightened of tall waves and
A QUESTION FOR
PAST GENERATIONS OF
NEW KALYMNOSS MOMS:
WHY SO MANY HAMS?
AFTER DINNER WE WERE DUE TO BECOME AMPHIBIOUS: NOT JUST BOYS
IN OUR DRY BEDS ANY LONGER, BUT MEN, DIVERS.
ANONYMOUS PHOTOGRAPHER, MISS BERNHARDT, THE OCEAN EXPRESS, CIRCA 1880

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liked to keep my head above them, like a
paddling dog. The best sponges were sev-
enty feet down.
The orange and uffy sponges that you
can buy in druggists stores are actually the
skeletons of the sponges. What divers har-
vest is the animal in its original state, gluey
and black.
Youre a man now, Jason Roubalis!
Youre a man now, Tazi Roubalis!
Drunk mothers from the town would
knock into us and exclaim, The twins! as
if they were gossiping with us about our
own freckled, identical faces. Gossip gets
incestuous like this in towns as small as
ours women would spread rumors all
over each other, about each others nieces,
sisters, husbands. My father, for example,
had a malformed left foot and a leg that was
broomstick-thin, turned inwards, a birth
defect, and people would sometimes ask us
how he got it. The Curse of Hephaestus,
they called it. How had we boys escaped it?
they wondered aloud, for which Tazi and I
had no good reply. (Had we? Externally, we
were very lucky, we were able-bodied,
but as the future rolled forward, the jury
was still out on whether we were cursed or
not, I thought).
Our friend Leo was crying under the
table he had lost his glasses and he
couldnt nd them in the tents shadows.
He bumped his head on the table, which
sent wine leaking to the ground all around
him like a curtain of blood. Leo started
screaming then, shaming his quiet par-
ents, and one of the older divers standing
near me lit a cigarette and muttered that
the chickenshit kid had better learn how to
hold his breath before his rst dive.
The Ceremony was better last year, the
old diver grumbled to no one visible. He
had the yellowed eyes of a man whos spent
half his life inverted underwater. A little
comma of blue icing hung underneath his
nostril that perfectly matched the color of
his teeth.
Everything was better last year, he
continued. The cake, the boys. The moth-
ers looked good last year, what happened?
Everybodys fatter this year! Everybodys
choking to death on this foul cake! Tastes
like they frosted it with gullshit
Tazi showed up at my side with a large
olive between his teeth. The red pimento
eyeballed me; my brother was looking over
my shoulder. I followed his gaze to our
father.
Captain Skupin and a few of his muscu-
lar divers had cornered him. They were all
gesturing, stabbing the air with cigarettes.
Tazi and I exchanged glances we knew
that they were probably making a request,
for some marine-smithing or horseshoeing
job for which our dad would never be com-
pensated. Captains bullied him into doing
work on their boats with attery, these
thugs who holstered their guns in doilies:
Nobody can do it but Hephaestus of the
Deep, nobody else has the talent. . . And we
could see our fathers weak chin lowering
in a yes. Yes after yes after yes after yes.
Old Hephaestus one-word biography. No
request was too time-consuming, too oner-
ous, too humiliating for him.
For twenty years, our father was the
blacksmith in New Kalymnos. He was
known locally as Hephaestus of the Deep.
Sometimes this got inected as a cruel
joke our father couldnt dive for sponges
with that leg, of course. He was, in fact,
slightly hydrophobic. He wouldnt let the
waves rise to his shins. When he and my
mother went on their walks along the beach
he stopped on his crutch at the base of the
pier, peering after her, his face coppery in
the gas lamps. Hed wave goodbye to her by
hoisting the single crutch high above his
shaggy head, which made Dad look a like a
one-antlered moose. Tazi and I tried to be
fair to both of them. One of us would stay
under the green lamps with our father, and
one of us would walk with our mother into
the sea.
But I dont mean to suggest that Dads
title around town, Hephaestus of the
Deep, was only an insult. The towns
relationship to our father was more com-
plicated than that. The nickname was a
compliment, too. The original Hephaestus
was an Olympian, after all. The Greek god
of the forge. The god of re, metallurgy,
red tongs, blacksmiths. Vulcan, to the
Romans. Uxorious, furious, intolerant of
alcohol. No ambrosia for me Zeus, thanks,
Im on the clock. Unique among the airier
Olympians for being a god with a day job.
Like Hephaestus, our dad was a paradox:
a powerful cripple. Pity seemed to be a
pointed fence from behind which all of the
neighbors could crouch and admire him.
Hephaestus of the Deep! the dock workers
called out to him when he walked with us
to school. Hot enough for you at your forge
today? Smiles planking their faces.
At school, I often got into ghts to
defend him. What happened this time?
our dad would ask me at night, furious.
Hed wince with disgust as he touched my
puffy black eye. He examined my face with
the same remote attention he xed on his
machinery. He was very furious with me,
for putting my body in harms way. As
if he had created something remarkable,
something prized, and I was daily ruining
it. The red anger was like a tiny satellite
around a shrouded planet I never knew
what was at the center of him.
Why do you make trouble, Jason?
You are the trouble.
You are the trouble.
They pick the ghts.
Then Id make a little cage over my eye.
Not to cover it, exactly. Id push my knuck-
les up and down over the bruised skin like a
spider doing push-ups.
On the night of the Skandalopetra
Ceremony, I later learned, our father
accepted a commission to create a special
kind of machine for Captain Skupin. He
drafted the plans for a prototype that very
night. Our mother followed Tazi and I
towards the house, yelling at the two of
us for drinking too much wine, urging
caution with our new skandalopetra; our
father, meanwhile, went limping into his
workshop. Just before sleep, I remember
staring across the lawn and seeing lamp-
light in his workshop, the night squared
and cinder-black around the open door
and the infernal heat ooding out of the
walls, our fathers head bent in silhouette
like a dead brown daisy. He was ponder-
ing, not hammering. In the morning, we
saw strange shapes sparkling along the
EVERYTHING WAS BETTER LAST YEAR, HE CONTINUED. THE CAKE,
THE BOYS. THE MOTHERS LOOKED GOOD LAST YEAR, WHAT HAPPENED?
DRUNK MOTHERS FROM THE
TOWN WOULD KNOCK INTO US
AND EXCLAIM, THE TWINS!
AS IF THEY WERE GOSSIPING
WITH US ABOUT OUR OWN
FRECKLED, IDENTICAL FACES.
LIKE HEPHAESTUS, OUR DAD
WAS A PARADOX:
A POWERFUL CRIPPLE.
draftsmans paper, dotted white lines
such as the ones youll see on star maps to
limn the constellations. These blueprints
were the maps of our fathers mechanical
dreams, incomprehensible to us. Visions
guided his big sts at the forge. His ham-
mer erupted in a hail of orange sparks and
sound. Pig squeals of re
We New Greeks dove with stones, just
as the Old Greeks in Kalymnos had done
for two millennium. Skandalopetra, our
future tombstones, tied around our waists
to speed our descent. The years came and
went like steady breath, and nobody could
imagine another way of doing things.
And then, through an accident of genius,
our dad invented a helmet.
The Hephaestus Helmet, they called it
at rst. Later, the devils dress.
The basic shbowl geometrics of the
helmet are ubiquitous. Nowadays I see it
echoed everywhere in the sun at noon,
punchbowls, girls knees, streetlamps, in
the go-slow yellow light sliding over Chevy
hubcaps, in the burgundy and pink bowl-
ing balls that modern, inland teenagers
hurl down the lanes at Star Palm Alley.
Today, the bronzed Hephaestus helmet is
like the great-grandfather of the helmets
worn by cosmonauts, these spacemen and
spacewomen who have upstaged the old
sponge divers of New Kalymnos, mining
moon rocks for nasa.
Our dads invention was a kind of
marine dynamite. Space rained down for
miles into the holes it made in the sea. In
a Hephaestus helmet, hooked to the spe-
cial breathing tube, divers could harvest
sponges at a depth of twenty fathoms. They
could walk the ocean oor for over an hour.
The Twelve-Mile Reef was now the shallow
end of our Atlantic. Huge sponge-beds
were discovered two-hundred feet down,
and underwater wars broke out among the
divers over their dominion. Our father had
unlidded a galaxy (one he could never see
for himself, sitting at his workbench, but
which he would try for the rest of his short
life to peer at through my eyes and Tazis).
Less than a month after its debut, every
sponging outt had ordered the complete
suit. Not just the bronze Hephaestus
helmets, but the below-the-neck accoutre-
ments: the air hoses, the breastplates, the
canvas jumpers. Dad barely had time to eat.
Skandalopetras were relics.
One month after our ceremony, our
stones leaned in corners, gathering webs.
For three months our family was
very rich we bought a blue Studebaker
Phaeton, drove north to see our rst winter,
drank Cokes and ate dark pudding in res-
taurants and then we were ruined.
My father, the lame blacksmith of New
Kalymnos, was held responsible for the
deaths and the paralysis of over a hundred
boys and men. His accomplice was the
ocean. But you cant put the ocean on trial,
can you?
Karen Russell is an adjunct profes-
sor of creative writing at Bryn Mawr
College and the spring 2012 Mary Ellen
von der Heyden Fiction Fellow at the
American Academy.
W
hen I was a kid, I somehow got it into my head that when
people said the writing on the wall, they were making a
reference to the Amityville Horror movie. If you havent
seen this movie, its a homeowners nightmare: newlyweds move
into an obviously haunted house the realtor knows its haunted, the
neighbors know, even their dog, a Cassandra-like Malamute named
Henry, knows. Yet the newlyweds continue to live there, blithe and
good-natured in the face of mounting evidence that their xer-upper
is a supernatural house of horrors. The writing is on the wall, and it is
not subtle. I saw this movie in the theater, and by the time their walls
began to literally ooze the entire Miami audience was screaming at
them, Your house is haunted, fools! Gas up the Dodge! Go to a Best
Western! Lady, put your contacts in, there is blood on that wall!
Of course, part of the movies pleasure was the agonizing tension
between our ability to interpret these portents and the newlyweds
cluelessness. It always amazes me how much our eyesight improves
when we are reading the story of someone elses life. Today I teach
literature, and I nd that certain ctional characters provoke an
Amityville-like heckling from my students: Look! He doesnt really
love her! Shes a liar! Hes the killer! Shes faking, Romeo, drop the
poison!
Their reactions have made me appreciate the special kind of lit-
eracy that the best books offer us Alice Munro and Virginia Woolf
reveal their characters natures to us so completely that we turn each
page with a feeling like clairvoyance. Fiction alerts us to our own
blindspots. It lifts us out of our narrow lives, gives us an extraordi-
nary, aerial view of the whole story. Its this perspective from which
the writing on the wall becomes legible.
And epiphanies, Im learning, are not only for a novels characters.
It can take me months of drafting before I become aware of my storys
true subject; by which point every page of the story is usually satu-
rated in it. Then I feel uncomfortably close to that Amityville woman,
humming and vacuuming away while a glowing dispatch from the
house itself seeps through the walls. Books create a space where we
can achieve this spontaneous literacy suddenly we are able to com-
prehend a truth that has been etched deeply within us from the very
beginning. James Baldwin beautifully describes the feeling:
It was not to be believed and I kept telling myself that . . . and at
the same time I couldnt doubt it. A great block of ice got settled in my
belly and kept melting there all day long.
The writing on the wall is gas-ame blue, effecting a phase
change in the reader: ice to water, suspicion to revelation.
THE WRITING ON THE WALL
KAREN RUSSELL
TODAY, THE BRONZED
HEPHAESTUS HELMET IS LIKE
THE GREAT-GRANDFATHER
OF THE HELMETS WORN BY
COSMONAUTS, THESE SPACEMEN
AND SPACEWOMEN WHO HAVE
UPSTAGED THE OLD SPONGE
DIVERS OF NEW KALYMNOS,
MINING MOON ROCKS FOR NASA.
JOURNALISM AS
LITERATURE
Imposing shapeliness
WOLFGANG BETKE, UNTITLED (RED SHIRT IN TATTERS), 2008. OIL, ACRYLIC, PAPER AND ABRASION ON CANVAS

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I wouldnt seek to dene it too carefully
other than that it should be true; I would
instead seek to dene it by example of what
it is. I would bet, without having this con-
versation with anyone else on this stage
previously, that a shared hero is George
Orwell.
The Orwell that matters to me most is
not the novels but his essays and books on
the Spanish Civil War, or poverty, or coal
miners in the North of England. A new
example of this is Katherine Boos book on
poverty and life in one slum in Mumbai.
The book has as much pulsating life in its
250 pages as the great novel of Mumbai,
Midnights Children.
JOSEPH LELYVELD:
I have always been a little wary of these
labels. I was around when the term New
Journalism was coined, and writers
spoke of nonction novels. It seemed to
me that a lot of the shapeliness they were
imposing was using techniques created by
ction writers in the early nineteenth and
twentieth centuries and applying them to
news stories, and I thought often it was
very pretentious and didnt really advance
the cause of telling the story in a truthful
way.
Theres a limit to what the nonction
novel can accomplish, because it seldom
inhabits the characters, gets into their
minds, and conveys their feelings. That
being said, there are books we all know
that we admire hugely, which might as
well be called literature because theyre
going to last.
Orwell is an example. A book from
that same era, which I always consider a
model of journalism, is Michael Herrs
Dispatches, war reportage from Vietnam,
by an Esquire writer whose specialty was
being there with the ground troops in the
meanest, most difcult combat. He inhab-
ited them; he reported their feelings and
their dialogue, and it was different from
most of the war correspondents one read
at the time. One of the key things about
reporting that you learn after a while is
that youve got to hang out and be patient,
not just grab a quote and run and slap it
onto a story. A lot of the best journalism is
dened by that willingness to stay and see
what will happen next.
This brings me to Katherine, who
stayed for four years. This book is seam-
less: its not weighted down with docu-
mentary evidence, but it feels authoritative,
and at the end you know those characters.
What she brings to her subject matter is
not only a quality of empathy but also of
great respect for people living hard, driven
lives. Im sure it will have a great impact in
journalistic circles everywhere, but its not
the kind of thing any hack can imitate: its
a great work of soul, discipline, and literary
skill.
KATHERINE BOO:
Thanks very much for everything you have
said. In terms of genres, whether some-
thing is literary or has another title is not
particularly interesting to me. Every story
has its own etiology, and youre trying to
gure out that story. As a practical mat-
ter, many of the people that I write about
are low-income and also semi-illiterate or
illiterate. If you stick a microphone in their
faces, theyre not always going to give you a
pithy and eloquent sound bite.
For instance, one boy I write about is
named Sunil, and when I met him he was
about 12 years old. His job is to collect gar-
bage around the increasingly glamorous
Mumbai airport. Hes working and trying
to survive in a society that looks at him as
if his life has about as much value as the
garbage he collects. If I ask him, What
does that feel like? How do you preserve
your self-worth in a society that doesnt
value you as a person? hes going to shrug.
But if I follow him for a very long time, if
I just shut up and watch and listen as he
goes about his days, Im going to begin to
see for myself the choices and judgments
hes making, and then I can ask him about
those choices and judgments. Had I only
done the journalism equivalent of a drive-
by saying, Tell me what the world looks
like to you I wouldnt be able to convey
to the reader either the volatility and dif-
culty of his life or the rich capacity of his
imagination. It takes a really long time,
sometimes to my editors consternation!
But I hope if you read the book youll have
a sense of this kid in full, not as a represen-
tative poor person but as a real, complex
human being making judgments in an
increasingly volatile world.
LELYVELD:
And I think you do it without the rst per-
son pronoun. Does it appear anywhere in
the book?
BOO:
Only at the end of the book, where Ive
included in an authors note that talks
about the documentary work that under-
FORMER ACADEMY FELLOW
AND PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING
AUTHOR KATHERINE BOOS
LATEST BOOK, BEHIND THE
BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS, IS SET
IN A SLUM IN MUMBAI. IT WAS
FEATURED IN THE FOLLOWING
DISCUSSION, WHICH TOOK
PLACE DURING A PANEL ON
JOURNALISM AS LITERATURE
AT THE JAIPUR LITERATURE
FESTIVAL ON JANUARY 22,
2012. IN THIS EDITED EXCERPT
FROM THE HOUR-LONG TALK,
BOO DESCRIBES HER WRITING
PROCESS AND NONFICTION
NARRATIVE CHOICES WITH THE
NEW YORKERS EDITOR, DAVID
REMNICK, AND FORMER NEW
YORK TIMES EDITOR JOSEPH
LELYVELD. THE FULL-LENGTH
VIDEO OF THE TALK, WHICH
WAS MODERATED BY SAMNATH
SUBRAMANIAN AND INCLUDED
PANELISTS JASON BURKE AND
PHILIP GOUREVITCH, IS AVAILABLE
FOR VIEWING ON THE JAIPUR
LITERATURE FESTIVALS WEBSITE.
DAVID REMNICK:
About fty years ago in the United
States, a terric reporter named Tom
Wolfe decided there was something
called New Journalism, which was
being published in places like Rolling
Stone and Esquire. New Journalism
imposed values of shapeliness onto
reporting rigor, so that people would
go to professional football games, drag
races, fashion shows, or war, and, hav-
ing rigorously reported these things,
would write about them in a way that
did not seem like dispatches in a news-
paper, or anything of that kind. It was
not merely a service; it was not just
todays news.
The interesting thing is that New
Journalism could be dated back centu-
ries, to Daniel Defoe, the Journal of the
Plague Year, or wherever you chose to
begin it; with Herodotus, for example,
which is a kind of history writing.
girds what Ive written. (In my reporting I
use audiotape and videotape, and also of-
cial documents obtained under govern-
ment Right To Information acts, which
allow me to compare the stories I see and
hear, especially about brutality and cor-
ruption, to the public record.)
I agonize about a lot of choices that I
make in my work, keeping myself out of the
main narrative isnt usually one of them. It
seems to me now that by now the author
writing about how she got her story has
become almost de rigueur. Theres a lot of
self-mythologizing bullshit about Here I
am, on the crowded, smelly bus on a rocky
road, and its so difcult for me here as a
reporter, but the work I do as a reporter is
nothing compared to the work of the people
Im reporting on.
I feel that the weight of every sentence
counts, and I want the weight of every
sentence in my book to bring you closer
to the people who you dont get to read
about as often as you get to read about
the hardworking writer in a difcult
environment.
Sometimes when we writers use rst
person, we may make ourselves look like
fools, but we never really make ourselves
look scurrilous. We always have, in that
rst person, a sense of our own honor,
and I just dont think thats the most inter-
esting thing I have to say. I think I have
other things to say than I worked hard to
do this book.
When Im reporting, Im always try-
ing to examine the ways that either gov-
ernment policy or economic forces are
affecting people on the so-called ground.
In the slum, for example, Im not trying
to nd the most virtuous, or perfect, or
exceptional person and tell you about that
person. Im more interested in ordinary
people as they negotiate their lives. When
I had the opportunity to write a book, I
had an incredible advantage of time. I
wasnt doing the story in a year; I was
writing about a diverse community over
the course of several years.
Another thing that changes the way I
write is the array of tools that I use. For
instance, when I was working in Mumbai,
especially in the beginning, I was totally
clueless, just hapless, falling into sew-
age lakes and getting in trouble with the
police. One of my amazing translators,
Unnati Tripathi, would come home from
the slum, nights, and write an imaginary
graphic novel about how ridiculous we
were.
But because I was using videotape,
I was able to record things that I didnt
fully understand. I was able to watch
them again and again, and gradually
begin to understand. The use of video-
tape and audiotape took the pressure off;
there wasnt much doubt about what hap-
pened, what the sequence of events was,
who said what. It gave me a lot more time
as a reporter to go deeper and examine
peoples motivations very carefully, some-
times even by showing the video I had just
recorded and asking them, What did you
feel then? What was happening in your
mind? What, among the limited number
of choices you were making, seemed to
you the best option at that time? I think
that creates a ctionalized sense as if
the author is some clairvoyant. But its
based on a lot of tedious work: going back
to people until you think youve got it as
close to right as you can get it.
Katherine Boo is a staff writer for
the New Yorker and was the spring
2007 Haniel Fellow at the American
Academy. David Remnick is the editor
of the New Yorker. Joseph Lelyveld is a
former correspondent and editor of the
New York Times.
WOLFGANG BETKE, PORTRAIT ANNA CHORESE, 2010, MIXED MEDIA

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I
magine that a monk from the
great monastery of Fulda in the age of
Charlemagne somehow found himself
whisked ahead six centuries to the year
1400. Fresh from hand copying a Gospel-
book in his scriptorium, he wonders how
books have changed over time. To his
astonishment, he nds them multiply-
ing everywhere, beyond all bounds, even
beyond monastery walls. A terrifying
specter unfolds before his minds eye: great
armies of scribes copying day and night
without rest, as if prodded by demons. He
catches his breath and steadies himself
from a moment of vertigo, as if peering
over the edge of a cliff. We might expect the
same degree of astonishment if we were to
transport a Victorian moralist to a college
campus after the sexual revolution of the
1960s.
The comparison is a stretch, but
not as much as you might think. The
Victorian might use the word promiscu-
ous to describe the morals of our day. The
Carolingian monk might use the same
word to describe late medieval book pro-
duction. And with good reason. Compared
to his own era, books in 1400 were cheap
and easily available (not unlike sex in the
1960s). They were mixing where they
shouldnt. Not only monks, but private indi-
viduals sometimes even laymen and lay-
women owned entire libraries. Written on
a strange new material that seemed likely
to decay, most of them looked cheap and
felt cheap, inside and outside. Worst of all,
many were now written in the vernacular
tongue. We think of the Canterbury Tales
and the Divine Comedy, but many new ver-
nacular texts also encouraged the spiritual
yearnings of laypeople, who hungered as
never before to participate in the life of the
Church. Instead of disdaining these aspira-
tions (as our monk certainly would have),
intellectuals increasingly approved of them.
We tend to think of the Middle Ages as
one seamless fabric, and nowhere more so
than in its writing technology. Our labels
conspire with us and against us: the Age of
Scribes evokes a timeless past of monks in
sleepy monasteries dotting an empty land-
scape a picture that, if it communicates
any truth at all, does so only for the world
before the end of the rst millennium.
Such labels disguise a far more interest-
ing reality: the Age of Scribes had already
witnessed several revolutions in book
production during the ve hundred years
before Gutenbergs invention around 1440.
Our time-traveling monk from the eighth
century might have spent years copying
massive volumes intended for display,
their bindings studded with gems, their
pages painted with gorgeous illuminations.
These were books meant to be carried aloft
in long processions around and through
the church amid a haze of smoke and
incense, then placed on the high altar. They
were objects of devotion and even love from
their owners.
B
ooks from the Carolingian
period are scarce today. You could
probably squeeze them all into a four-
bedroom house and still have room for a
couch and a modern entertainment system.
Just 1,800 manuscript books have survived
from before the year 800, many of them
mere fragments of papyrus or parchment.
Centuries of loss have taken a toll, but these
books were scarce even in the world into
which Charlemagne was born. The wealthi-
est monasteries in his empire could only
muster collections of a few hundred vol-
umes. The monks copied ancient texts too.
The Carolingian copies of those texts are
usually the earliest ones we now possess.
On the eve of the Viking raids just before
the year 800, much of classical literature
dangled by a thread.
Attitudes toward learning changed slow-
ly over the centuries, and with them atti-
tudes toward books. New schools attached
to cathedrals appeared in urban centers in
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with
different needs. New disciplines appeared
theology, law, and medicine which
THE WORLDS FIRST
MEDIA REVOLUTION
Medieval book productions promiscuous nature
By Daniel Hobbins
WE TEND TO THINK OF THE MIDDLE AGES AS ONE SEAMLESS FABRIC,
AND NOWHERE MORE SO THAN IN ITS WRITING TECHNOLOGY.
JEAN GERSON (13631429), A FRENCH
SCHOLAR, EDUCATOR, REFORMER, POET,
AND CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY
OF PARIS, WROTE LA MONTAGNE DE
CONTEMPLATION FOR HIS SISTERS IN
THE YEAR 1400 TO PROVIDE THEM WITH
A GUIDE TO THE MYSTICAL LIFE. AT THE
WORKS OPENING, HE WRITES THAT THE
CLERGY HAVE PLENTY OF WORKS IN LATIN
TO CHOOSE FROM ON THIS TOPIC, BUT
THOSE IGNORANT OF LATIN HAVE NOTHING
TO READ. THIS IMAGE APPEARS AT THE
BEGINNING OF A COPY OF THE WORK
AND DRAMATIZES THE MOMENT WHEN
GERSON DELIVERS HIS FRENCH TEXT
PRESUMABLY TO HIS SISTERS.
JEAN GERSON DELIVERING LA MONTAGNE DE CONTEMPLATION TO TWO RELIGIOUS WOMEN. BRUSSELS, BIBLIOTHQUE ROYALE BELGIQUE
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anchored their study to one authoritative
textbook. The layout of these textbooks
illustrates the changing intellectual priori-
ties of the day. The authoritative text moved
to a single column in the center of the page,
while a commentary on the text crowded
around it, as if threatening to swallow
it. Reading habits changed too. Scribes
devised strategies to help readers navigate
the manuscript book and to read selectively.
Running headers and paragraph divi-
sions made their rst appearance. Chapter
divisions now broke up the text of Holy
Scripture. No longer to be adored and dis-
played on the communal altar, these books
were objects of study.
Cathedral schools slowly turned into
universities, as translations of re-discov-
ered Greek texts (some now with Muslim
commentary) streamed north from Spain
and Italy. By the thirteenth century, a new
kind of literature appeared, geared to the
training of clergy. For the rst time in his-
tory, the Bible could t into a single volume,
thanks in part to thinner parchment, the
distant ancestor of the lightweight paper
used in Bibles today. To help meet demand
from students and masters for textbooks,
especially in theology, the University of
Paris introduced a novel scheme. It licensed
an ofcial book dealer to rent books for
copy, one gathering at a time (a group of
sheets folded in half, thus doubling the
number of pages), so that multiple copies
could be made simultaneously. Copying
had moved out of the monasteries. Monks
still copied books, but so did a new genera-
tion of clergy, masters, and students.
By the time of the Black Death (1348
1350), this piece-system of copying had
vanished. Another upheaval lay in store
for the Age of Scribes, this one the most
convulsive yet. One of the unexplained
paradoxes of history is that despite the
unfathomable mortality of the Black
Death (one-third to one-half of all Western
Europeans), the communication systems
of Western Europe were far more complex
by 1400 than they were a century or two
earlier. Some of this complexity resulted
from better organization of state power.
Royal archives grew larger in England and
France, while princes became great patrons
of literature. Driven by the urgency of the
Hundred Years War, bureaucracies in
France, England, and Burgundy took great
effort to transmit ofcial positions on mat-
ters of state interest. By the early fteenth
century, the dukes of Burgundy employed
enough scribes to make hundreds of copies
of the same text and a courier service to dis-
tribute them around France, all within days.
Oral forms of communication sermons
and town criers remained critical to the
spread of news, but the written word occu-
pied a far more important place now than
in 1300. In 1423, the renowned theologian
Jean Gerson even announced that there
was a shortage of scribes.
D
emand for books surged like
never before in the decades before
print, much of it in the regions we
now call Germany and Italy. Meanwhile,
the costly and damaging campaigns of
the Hundred Years War crippled France
and England. According to our best esti-
mate, by the 1460s manuscript production
in Germany was ten times greater than
in 1250. The gears and wheels of this great
book-producing machine were many.
Religious orders such as the Carthusians,
renowned for their austerity and vows of
silence, amassed huge libraries and gained
a reputation as the book order. New semi-
monastic orders such as the Brethren of the
Common Life made their living in towns
and cities, partly through the copying of
books, which they saw as a holy exercise.
Universities spread to new regions.
Before the Black Death, students from all
over Europe traveled to universities at Paris,
Bologna, Oxford, and a few others. The
period after 1348 saw a wave of new founda-
tions, then a second wave following the out-
break of the Great Schism (1378), when two
men claimed the papal ofce. Many of the
new universities were in Germany. Each
one generated more demand for books and
paper.
E
ven the crisis in the Church
stimulated book production, as a gen-
eration of intellectuals tried to solve
the Schism by writing tracts, the distant
ancestors of the Reformation pamphlet.
The Councils of Constance (14141418)
and Basel (14311449), convened to reform
the Church and deal with heretics, served
also as marketplaces where intellectuals
from all over Europe gathered for years
to exchange ideas and to copy books. To
meet the demand for books at Basel, copy-
ing took place on an almost industrial
scale, anticipating the great invention of
Gutenberg just two hundred miles down
the Rhine at Mainz.
Beyond clerical circles, the reading pub-
lic was expanding faster than ever, putting
more pressure on copyists, who must have
felt as secure as Google technicians with all
the demand for their services. They would
have been crushed to learn that Gutenberg
had begun conducting his rst experi-
ments in articial copying. We can only
guess at literacy rates for the pre-modern
period. What we do know is that even mod-
est towns had grammar schools and that
more people could read than ever before,
including many women, whether in Latin
or in the vernacular. Soon, books began to
appear in wills, a testimony to the growth
of private libraries. These new lay readers
drove the growth of a secular book trade in
the major cities of Western Europe, entirely
removed from the monasteries. Writing
took other shapes besides books. Walking
down the streets of a late medieval city,
our time-traveling monk would have been
astonished to see leaets posted on walls
and church doors, and bills passed hand to
hand, spreading news and sometimes radi-
cal opinions.
Exhibition catalogues tend to give us
a distorted picture of this new world of
writing. They show us triumphs of illu-
mination such as the Trs Riches Heures
of Jean, Duke of Berry, the devotional
toys of the wealthy. Nearly every book
about medieval manuscripts privileges
artistic content over other considerations.
In reality, most of the books produced in
the century before Gutenberg are shabby
productions, copied onto paper instead of
parchment, often scribbled in an ugly cur-
sive bookhand. Cheap paper begat sloppy
scribes. Sometimes the handwriting is
crooked because no one took the trouble
to line the pages. Scribes left space for
MOST OF THE BOOKS PRODUCED
IN THE CENTURY BEFORE
GUTENBERG ARE SHABBY
PRODUCTIONS, COPIED ONTO
PAPER INSTEAD OF PARCHMENT,
OFTEN SCRIBBLED IN AN UGLY
CURSIVE BOOKHAND.
BEYOND CLERICAL CIRCLES,
THE READING PUBLIC WAS
EXPANDING FASTER THAN EVER,
PUTTING MORE PRESSURE ON
COPYISTS, WHO MUST HAVE
FELT AS SECURE AS GOOGLE
TECHNICIANS WITH ALL THE
DEMAND FOR THEIR SERVICES.
decorated initials that no one bothered to
paint.
But if this is the theme of our story if
we reduce these books to a disappointing
epilogue in the long history of the manu-
script book we will fail to recognize the
historical evidence they present for an
upheaval in book production, a shift com-
parable to the revolution of print itself, or
perhaps the rise of the mass paperback in
the twentieth century. Like paperbacks,
these shabby late-medieval manuscripts
opened the path to book ownership for a
new generation of readers, while allowing
institutions such as monasteries to amass
large collections.
Above all, these manuscripts testify
to a deep hunger for books that could not
be satised by the methods of earlier cen-
turies. Readers in Italy clamored for the
works of Dante and Boccaccio, classical
texts, and the works of humanist authors.
In Germany they hungered instead for
moral, spiritual, and devotional works, for
authors like the chancellor of the University
of Paris, Jean Gerson; or the Viennese
theologian Nicholas of Dinkelsbhl, or for
Bible commentaries or bestsellers like The
Imitation of Christ, which you can still nd
in bookstores today. Everyone everywhere,
it seems, wanted a book of hours.
New material conditions made all of
these new books possible. One of the
most expensive materials in a manu-
script book was the animal skin that
became the parchment page. By the late
thirteenth century, paper mills began
spreading north from Spain and Italy,
reaching northern France by around 1350
and Nuremberg before the year 1400,
then moving swiftly into the Rhineland.
Prices for paper fell steadily as the scale
of production increased. By the fteenth
century a copyist in France could buy
twenty-ve sheets of paper for one sheet
of parchment. Purists insisted on the
superiority of parchment, but most read-
ers felt that paper was just ne especially
in Germany. Johann Gutenberg lived in a
world where nine out of ten manuscripts
were copied on paper. The success of his
invention would depend on it. For scribes,
the quill could move along the surface
of paper more quickly than across parch-
ment. New cursive scripts after 1300
enabled scribes to write even more quickly.
Authors began copying their own works
themselves instead of dictating. The world
was speeding up. Looking back across six
centuries, we see a distant mirror of our
own information age.
Other labels mislead us, not just
the Age of Scribes but our boundary
between medieval and early modern,
which happens to coincide closely with
Gutenbergs invention. Both labels
obscure the fact that the age of mass
production of manuscripts, from 1350 to
the late fteenth century, bears a closer
resemblance to the early centuries of print
up to the year 1700 than to the period
that preceded it. A more coherent histori-
cal model for understanding the worlds
rst media revolution would require new
boundaries describing the period from
1350 to 1700 as a unied whole, the great
age of books. In this new model, we can
see more clearly the role of print not as
the driver of demand for books, but as
the product of a demand that had been
gaining momentum for a century and
that would continue until books blended
into the fabric of human life. These new
boundaries would also take the pressure
off of print, which historians have some-
times called upon to explain far too much.
M
any historians rightly
reject narrations that give com-
plex historical developments an
air of inevitability. Gutenberg did not have
to invent movable type printing because
of massive demand for more books. Nor
did anyone else. But looking back now, we
can see the pressure building toward some
kind of breakthrough, whether more or
less dramatic than print itself. Gutenberg
was not the only one looking for answers.
The nal solution turned out to be print.
For that, he deserves credit, and for lay-
ing the groundwork for the real transfor-
mations that print would help to make
possible.
So is there any lesson here as we muddle
through our own media revolution, the
shift from print to digital books? Medieval
historians are not usually in the business of
offering lessons for the present. But I think
that a better understanding of the historical
forces that led to the rst media revolution
may help us to see the issues more clearly,
and, if not to nd any answers, then at least
to ask the right questions. We can all agree
that the shift to digital media has been
gathering momentum for the past thirty
to forty years. But is there any historical
momentum driving the specic shift to the
digital book, in the way that print met the
demand for more books, cheaper and more
swiftly copied? Why do people buy digital
books? Instant gratication? Portability?
Reducing clutter from their lives? The
sense of being modern? No doubt all of
these desires play some role in the shift to
digital books. But is this all? What do we
want from digital books that physical books
cannot offer?
As for the shift itself and how to negoti-
ate it, I fear that history has little to teach
us. Early printed books look exactly like
manuscripts. They were designed that way
so that people would read them. Crossing
the threshold from print into digital books,
we enter a much different reality. When we
digitize the book, we lose the very things
that have constituted its boundaries for
over fteen hundred years. The length of
a book is in some sense shaped and even
determined by the physical properties of
the codex (the ancient term for the volume
itself). Images in books conform to the
page. This rule applies to printed books, to
manuscripts volumes, and even to scrolls.
Digital books know no such limits. What
are the new boundaries of our digital medi-
um? How will books change to incorporate
images and lm?
Ironically, it seems we face a future
not unlike the distant past of our time-
traveling monk. Almost no ordinary person
in Charlemagnes world owned a book. By
the year 2300, perhaps we will have come
full circle.
Daniel Hobbins is an associate profes-
sor of history at Ohio State University
and was the Academys Nina Maria
Gorrissen Fellow in fall 2011.
EVERYONE EVERYWHERE,
IT SEEMS, WANTED
A BOOK OF HOURS.
ABOVE ALL, THESE MANUSCRIPTS TESTIFY TO A DEEP HUNGER
FOR BOOKS THAT COULD NOT BE SATISFIED BY
THE METHODS OF EARLIER CENTURIES.
T
here remains a widely per-
ceived notion still commonly held
within intellectual, academic, and
policy circles in the West and elsewhere
that Muslim societies are especially
resistant to embarking upon the path of
demographic and familial change that
has transformed population proles in
Europe, North America, and other more
developed areas (as UN terminology
would have it). But such notions speak to a
bygone era; they are utterly uninformed by
the important new demographic realities
that reect todays life patterns within the
Arab world, and the greater Islamic world
as well.
Throughout the Ummah, or worldwide
community of followers of Islam, fertil-
ity levels are falling dramatically, and
traditional marriage patterns and living
arrangements are undergoing tremendous
change. Indeed, this quiet revolution is
already evident at the national and sub-
national levels for most of the worlds
Muslim-majority societies. My colleague
Apoorva Shah and I detail this remarkable,
and still strangely overlooked revolution in
a recent study for the American Enterprise
Institute, from which the ndings in this
essay are drawn.
Along with the US Census Bureau,
the United Nations Population Division
(unpd) stands today as the authoritative
go-to international source for worldwide
demographic data. According to unpds
estimates and projections, all Muslim-
majority countries and territories for which
data are available (48 out of 49 such spots
on the map) witnessed fertility decline over
the past three decades.
To be sure: for some high- or extremely-
high-fertility venues in sub-Saharan Africa,
where six, seven, or even eight births per
woman were typical a generation ago,
intervening declines are believed to have
been marginal (think of Sierra Leone, Mali,
Somalia, and Niger). In some other places,
where a fertility transition had already
brought childbearing down to about three
births per woman by the late 1970s, sub-
sequent absolute declines also appear to
have been somewhat limited (think of
Kazakhstan). In most of the rest of the
Muslim-majority countries and territories,
however, signicant or dramatic reductions
in fertility have been registered and in
many of these places, the drops in question
have been truly extraordinary.
S
ix of the ten largest absolute
declines in fertility for a two-decade
period recorded in the postwar era
have occurred in Muslim-majority coun-
tries. In fact, the four largest of these
absolute declines all happened in Muslim-
majority countries each of these entailing
a decline of over 4.5 births per woman in
just twenty years. (The world record-break-
er here, Oman, is estimated to have seen
its total fertility rates (tfr) fall by over
5.3 births per woman over just the last
two decades; a drop of over 2.6 births per
woman per decade!) Notably, four of the ten
greatest fertility declines ever recorded in
a twenty-year period took place in the Arab
world (Algeria, Libya, Kuwait, and Oman);
adding Iran, we see that ve of the top ten
unfolded in the greater Middle East. No other
region of the world not highly dynamic
Southeast Asia, or even rapidly modernizing
East Asia comes close to this showing.
A separate but largely congruent read-
ing can be drawn from these same unpd
data, ranking the top ten historical fertil-
ity declines during any twenty-year period
by country in terms of proportional rather
than absolute drops in tfrs. By this metric,
only four of the top ten fertility drops to date
have occurred in Muslim-majority countries
and only two of the top four were Muslim-
majority areas (Iran and the Maldives).
Especially noteworthy here, nonetheless, is
that places like Kuwait, Oman, and Iran all
effected fertility declines of over two-thirds
in just twenty years and that this pace
of change exceeded the tempo of fertility
decline in almost all of the Pacic Rim soci-
eties; the bric economies (Brazil, Russia,
India, and China); and the other non-Muslim
emerging market economies.
Given these extraordinary fertility
declines, a substantial share of the Ummah
is now accounted for by countries and terri-
tories with childbearing patterns compara-
ble to those contemporary afuent Western
non-Muslim populations.
The gure on page 38 underscores the
similarity between contemporary fertility
levels in much of the Ummah and those
of the United States. As may be seen, tfrs
WANING CRESCENT
Slipping birth rates in the Muslim world
By Nicholas Eberstadt
THROUGHOUT THE UMMAH,
FERTILITY LEVELS ARE FALLING
DRAMATICALLY, AND TRADITIONAL
MARRIAGE PATTERNS
AND LIVING ARRANGEMENTS ARE
UNDERGOING
TREMENDOUS CHANGE.
Tunisias tfr looks like Illinois. Lebanons
fertility level is lower than New York states.
As for Iran, its fertility level today is compa-
rable with those of the New England states,
the region in America with the lowest
fertility rate. No state in the contemporary
usa, however, has a fertility level as low as
Albanias.
in a great many Muslim-majority popula-
tions look quite American these days. To
go by these gures, for example, Algeria,
Bangladesh, and Morocco all have fertility
levels corresponding to the state of Texas,
while Indonesias is almost identical to
Arkansas. Turkey and Azerbaijan, for their
part, are on par with Louisiana, while
A
ll in all, according to these
unpd numbers, 21 Muslim-
majority populations would seem
to have fertility levels these days that would
be unexceptional for states in the usa (with
the possible exception of Albania, whose
fertility level might arguably look too low
to be truly American). As of 2009, these
21 countries and territories encompassed
a total estimated population of almost
750 million: which is to say, very nearly
half of the total population of the Ummah.
These numbers, remember, exclude hun-
JOSEF ALBERS, HOMAGE TO THE SQUARE: EXPANDING, 1954, OIL ON HARDBOARD

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TOTAL FERTILITY RATES IN MANY MUSLIM-MAJORITY POPULATIONS
LOOK QUITE AMERICAN THESE DAYS.
dreds of millions of Muslims in countries
where Islam is not the predominant reli-
gion. Taking this into account, it could be
that a majority of Muslims already live in
countries where their fertility levels would
look entirely unexceptional in an American
mirror.
F
or German readers, the ques-
tion of Turkish fertility may seem,
so to speak, especially pregnant. In
a great deal of German-language com-
mentary, there seems to be an impression
that Turkish families both in Germany
and overseas are extraordinarily pro-
lic. Yet in reality, whatever the problems
of Turkish integration into mainstream
German society may look like today, the
fact of the matter is that birth rates have
been plummeting both in Turkey and for
Germanys Turkish ethnics. In Germany,
for example, the fertility rate for ethnic
Turks fell by more than half between the
early 1970s and the late 1990s at which
time it was just above the replacement
level, comparable, say, to rates for white
Americans in the state of Kansas at the
time. And in Turkey itself, according
to estimates and projections by the US
Census Bureau, the number of births per
woman has dropped by more than half
over the last generation, from 4.7 in 1980
to around 2.1 (the replacement level, or
average number of births required for
long-term population stability without
immigration) today.
Note, incidentally, that Turkey is
achieving replacement fertility at a
much lower level of per capita income
than Germany enjoyed in the early 1970s,
when German national fertility crossed
the replacement threshold. And Turkeys
national fertility level, furthermore, is
a nationwide average: many regions of
Turkey are already well below the replace-
ment level.
According to Eurostat, for example,
Istanbuls fertility level in 2009 was
1.73 births per woman slightly below
the levels for such places as Inner London
(1.77 in 2009), Oslo (1.88 in 2009), or
Antwerp (1.93 in 2008) Along Turkeys
Western coast in regions like Bati
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Muslim-Majority TFRs as reported by the UNPD for 200512
FOR GERMAN READERS, THE
QUESTION OF TURKISH FERTILITY
MAY SEEM, SO TO SPEAK,
ESPECIALLY PREGNANT.
TOTAL FERTILITY RATES IN SELECTED US STATES
AND MUSLIM COUNTRIES, CIRCA 2007
1.5 1.7 1.9 2.1 2.3 2.5 2.7
Albania
Vermont
Michigan
Illinois
Louisiana
Alaska
South Dakota
Arizona
Idaho
Utah
Arkansas
Texas
Florida
USA
Massachusetts
UAE
Lebanon
Tunesia
Brunei
Azerbaiian
Indonesia
Turkey
Kuwait
Morocco
Bangladesh
Algeria
Qatar
Uzbekistan
Turkmenistan
Kyrgyzstan
Malaysia
Kazakhstan
Bahrain
Maldives
Iran
Marmara and Izmir the total fertility rate
today is down to 1.5 births per woman not
so different from such parts of German-
speaking Europe as Saxony (1.44), Western
Austria (1.45), or Zurich (1.51)!
How are these remarkable demographic
transformations in Muslim societies today
to be accounted for? Typically, demogra-
phers and other social scientists in our
era attempt to explain fertility changes in
terms of the socioeconomic trends that
drive (or at least accompany) them. Indeed:
a century of social science research has
detailed the historical and international
associations between fertility decline and
socioeconomic modernization (as repre-
sented by increasing income levels, edu-
cational attainment, urbanization, public
health conditions, and the like). Those
associations, not surprisingly, are imme-
diately evident in simple cross-country
correlations between national fertility
levels and these respective socioeconomic
variables. But just as clearly, these broad
associations between fertility change and
material measures of modernization or
socioeconomic development are not the
whole story.
O
ver a decade and a half ago,
a path-breaking study by Lant
Pritchett made the persuasive case
that desired fertility levels (as expressed by
women of childbearing age in demograph-
ic and health surveys (dhs) and other
such questionnaires about childbearing
intentions and attitudes) were the single
best predictor for actual fertility levels
in the less developed regions. There is in
fact roughly a 90% association between
wanted fertility and actual fertility levels
in the less developed countries for which
such recent data were available.
This nding still ies in the face of
much received opinion in population
policy circles. In particular, it seems to
challenge the notion that family planning
programs, by encouraging modern contra-
ceptive use, may make an important inde-
pendent contribution to reducing fertility
levels in developing countries, especially
by reducing what is called excess fertil-
ity or unwanted fertility. But there is
no observable correspondence whatsoever
between these two factors in our analyses
of recent data from dhs survey for low-
income countries. Socioeconomic factors,
to be sure, may well affect the desired fam-
ily sizes that women of childbearing ages
report in fact they surely do. But the criti-
cal determinant of actual fertility levels in
Muslim and non-Muslim societies alike at
the end of the day would appear to be atti-
tudinal and volitional, rather than material
and mechanistic.
Why should this be so? Muslim-
majority countries apparently tend to have
substantially lower fertility levels nowa-
days than non-Muslim comparators when
holding income, literacy, contraceptive use,
and desired fertility constant. Muslim-
majority countries also tend to have
signicantly lower levels of modern con-
traception use than non-Muslim countries
at the same income levels: indeed, holding
income constant, modern contraception
usage was approximately 14 percentage
points lower in Muslim than in non-Mus-
lim majority societies in the 1980s, and
remained about 11 percentage points lower
twenty years later. Despite such character-
istically more limited use of modern con-
traception, the pervasive, dramatic, and
in some cases historically unprecedented
declines in fertility in Muslim-majority
societies that we have been examining
here nevertheless took place.
W
hat should be emphasized
at this point is the critical
role human agency appears
to have played in this transformation.
Developmentalist perspectives cannot
explain the great changes underway in
many of these countries and territories
in fact, various metrics of socioeconomic
modernization serve as much poorer
predictors of fertility change for Muslim-
majority populations than for non-Muslim
populations. Not to put too ne a point on
it: proponents of developmentalism are
confronted by the awkward fact that fertil-
ity decline over the past generation has
been more rapid in the Arab states than
virtually anywhere else on earth while
well-informed observers lament the excep-
tionally poor development record of the
Arab countries over that very period.
By the same token, contraceptive
prevalence has only limited statistical
power in explaining fertility differentials
for Muslim-majority populations and
can do nothing to explain the highly
inconvenient fact that use of modern con-
traceptives remains much lower among
Muslim-majority populations than among
non-Muslim societies with similar income
levels, despite the tremendous fertility
declines recorded in the former over the
past generation.
It seems curious, to put it mildly, that
this monumental change in human liv-
ing conditions should have gone all but
overlooked by well-informed scholars,
researchers, and policymakers the world
over. In the Middle East, to be sure, politics
was, until the Arab Spring, essentially
frozen for a generation or more: perhaps
this brute fact encouraged the presump-
tion that the societies beneath were frozen
as well. Most clearly, they were not: rather,
they were being recast, sometimes radi-
cally, by men and women through their
own actions and on the basis of their own
preferences and desires. We should see in
this saga important commonalities with
our own ways of life: and perhaps some
underappreciated hopes for the future as
well.
Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry
Wendt Chair in Political Economy at
the American Enterprise Institute
in Washington, DC, and is senior
adviser to the National Bureau of Asian
Research in Seattle. In spring 2008
Eberstadt was the Bosch Fellow in
Public Policy at the American Academy
in Berlin.
PROPONENTS OF
DEVELOPMENTALISM ARE
CONFRONTED BY THE AWKWARD
FACT THAT FERTILITY DECLINE
OVER THE PAST GENERATION
HAS BEEN MORE RAPID IN THE
ARAB STATES THAN VIRTUALLY
ANYWHERE ELSE ON EARTH.
THE CRITICAL DETERMINANT OF ACTUAL FERTILITY
LEVELS IN MUSLIM AND NON-MUSLIM SOCIETIES ALIKE AT THE END OF
THE DAY WOULD APPEAR TO BE ATTITUDINAL AND VOLITIONAL,
RATHER THAN MATERIAL AND MECHANISTIC.
T
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S
A WORLD IN PROCESS
The global condition in the long twentieth century
BERLIN JOURNAL:
Youve both alluded to the inadequacy of
traditional Western narratives of history,
which now require a re-narration using
a global lens. Can either of you remember
the rst moment, in childhood or later on,
when it occurred to you that history is not
fact, but a method of storytelling, a shifting
truth dependent on the narrator?
MICHAEL GEYER:
Putting aside the question of history-
as-storytelling, there are two moments
that spring to mind. Neither have to do
with such weighty matters as traditional
Western narrative, but they are indica-
tive of how we step in and out of narrative
and explanatory conventions. The rst
involves the experience of growing up in
southwest Germany and the daily reality
of Swiss, Austrian, French, American, and
regional radio stations. I grew up with Herr
Peiderer and Patsy Cline, and a good bit
of envy for the admirable Swiss. I also grew
up with an entire French regiment behind
our high school, though the soldiers largely
kept to themselves. Still, Paris was far clos-
er than Cold-War Berlin. There was always
more than one narrative, language, and
culture in the Germany I grew up in.
The second moment coincided with
learning to write scholarly articles in
English. It was a small, practical issue: no
grand insights to be had about a postmod-
ern condition. But nothing transnational-
izes your mind more than retraining it
to write a simple paragraph of academic
German in English. The topical sentence
was a major epistemological revelation for
me. The elision of German footnote archi-
tecture the wonderful balance of above
the line text and below the line evidence
was a genuine loss, for which the clarity of
English diction is no compensation. I am
not sure if truth shifts with narrators, but
positionality how to place yourself in the
context of others came quite naturally,
long before I grasped the intellectual wager.
CHARLES BRIGHT:
Like Michael, a couple of seminal
moments come to mind. I grew up in
the US South, during segregation, part
of a large extended family that had been
deeply involved in Protestant missionary
work in China between the 1890s and the
1940s. I lived in a house full of Chinese
things prayers were said in Chinese
and there were endless stories told by the
adults about episodes and people they
had encountered in China, all of which I
absorbed as a child. My family also had
maids, gardeners, and household help who
were all black. I remember the revelation
(it truly dawned on me), sometime in the
mid-1950s, that while I knew a lot about
Chinese people whom I would never meet
one couldnt even go there then I knew
nothing at all about the African American
servants their lives, culture, and aspira-
tions. No stories. And they lived just next
door, so to speak.
There was nothing profound about
history, here, though goodness knows
there was a lot of history bundled into this
moment of recognition. What gets recalled
or made visible and what is occluded or
left uninvestigated, or is simply considered
uninteresting is very particular and
dependent on the observer. You have to ask
questions if you want to know more.
And a second dawning: although I
grew up with daily readings of the Bible
and could recite long passages of the Old
Testament by heart, I knew few if any
Jews in my childhood. I did have a Jewish
roommate in college, however, from whom
I learned a lot about customs, practices,
and observances. His grandparents had
immigrated to the US from the Pale of
Settlement in the Ukraine. They had not
kept in close touch with extended family
back home, his parents shared little about
their ancestry, and all had been wiped out
in the Holocaust. He knew his grandpar-
ents names, but nothing more and no
trace running further back of his family.
I, on the other hand, had elaborate family
trees of ancestry going back to the time
of Henry VIII in England (Ive visited the
site of family origins in East Anglia), the
familys migration to the colonies in the
1660s, on down through generations of
Brights offshoots and dead ends included.
Such knowledge gave me a history, or the
ability to tell a history, and, through it, to
have an identity of a certain sort. I knew
who I was in a way my friend did not. It
was perhaps my rst insight into subaltern
history, or into the dilemmas of history
being narrated by the winners. Another
complex bundle of histories, especially for
a Southern boy raised on stories of the lost
cause but enjoying a privileged position in
a rigid racial (and gendered) hierarchy.
THIS INTERVIEW BY BRITTANI SONNENBERG, EDITOR OF THE BERLIN JOURNAL, WITH CURRENT ACADEMY
FELLOWS MICHAEL GEYER AND CHARLES BRIGHT TOOK PLACE OVER EMAIL AND SKYPE, AND ACROSS
OCEANS AND TIME ZONES TRUE TO THE NATURE OF THEIR ACADEMY PROJECT. THE WIDE-RANGING TALK
TOUCHES ON CHILDHOOD PRAYERS IN CHINESE, A NEW DEFINITION OF HEIMWEH, AND HOW THE GLOBAL
CONDITION REPRESENTS AN ENMESHMENT OF ALL WITH ALL.
IT WAS PERHAPS MY FIRST INSIGHT INTO SUBALTERN HISTORY,
OR INTO THE DILEMMAS OF HISTORY BEING NARRATED
BY THE WINNERS.
BRIGHT: You dont never can entirely
transcend yourself. What we are trying to
study the condition of the global or global-
ity is, almost by denition, apprehensible
from multiple standpoints. This is true for
actors who try to engage the global condi-
tion and for historians who try to narrate
its history. Comprehending the global is
a mental stretch from any particular posi-
tionality, and people grasp it and narrate it
from very different vantage points. There
can be no single homogenized global histo-
ry. Global history, like the global condition,
is a dialectical process proceeding from dis-
tinct vantage points and including multiple,
simultaneously coexisting histories.
GEYER: It is often said that globality breeds
homogeneity. But while it may be a bene-
cial experience to be able to nd the lavatory
in any airport worldwide (which requires
recognizable, functional icons), this hardly
indicates a convergence of narratives about
being in a tightly interconnected world.
What you make of that interconnection
is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but
the connected beholder may live two or
three lives simultaneously. He or she may
GEYER: It is worth pointing out that our
experience of globality is of a peculiar
kind. Long before we went into the world
and actively sought out connections, the
world had come to us and shaped our
local lives. The world was always already
there. Also, our overlapping reference was
the United States, but Charlies Southern
America was quite different from my
German Amerika.
BRIGHT: When we started thinking about
global history, one of the rst things we
realized was that we do globality before
we think it. The global is there and in
us before we know what to say about it.
This experience is quite opposite to that
of nineteenth-century practitioners of
Universalgeschichte: they had to imagine
the world as a whole without any real
interaction with it.
BERLIN JOURNAL: In re-narrating the
twentieth century, in repositioning China,
for example, from its traditional mar-
ginalized and ancient role, as Michael
described, do you ever struggle with your
own Western origins and identity? In
other words, how do historians go about
transcending their own culture in order to
diligently describe the global?
GEYER: Historians are bound to transcend
the horizon of their own (present) reality.
It is part of their skill set (how to read/lis-
ten to/view evidence from different times
and places) and part of their mindset (his-
toricism: assigning special signicance
to the particularity of a period, place, or
culture). The debate among historians is
rather whether it is permissible to disap-
pear in other times and other cultures
(antiquarianism). My short answer is
that we cannot and should not. In aim-
ing to understand worlds different from
our own, we will start out from and
return to the horizon of the present the
moment, the place, and the audiences.
The challenge for all historians is to make
this travelling history intelligible and
reproducible.
TACITA DEAN, FROM FILM, NOTEBOOK PAGES, 2011
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WHEN WE STARTED THINKING
ABOUT GLOBAL HISTORY, ONE OF
THE FIRST THINGS WE REALIZED
WAS THAT WE DO GLOBALITY
BEFORE WE THINK IT.
have a global existence (as a migrant, bank-
er, or ngo activist) and yet live in barely
commensurate local worlds (of family and
social ties that dene civic status and daily
realities of class, ethnicity, gender, etc.).
The simultaneously coexisting histories
are not simply out there; they are within us.
This fractured or multilayered subjectiv-
ity is the beginning of the possibility of a
conversation under conditions of globality.
But the fact that subjectivities are fractured
in this way means that conversation in an
interconnected world can hardly lead to a
convergence of narratives.
it is also living the difference within your
own multi-layered existence.
GEYER: Which is a source of extraordinary
tension, but less often pinpointed as a
source of breakdowns. Heimweh, when
taken to mean a yearning for an unequivo-
cal identity, is an extraordinarily force in a
global world. There is a powerful impulse
to seize on one layer or another and make
it the whole. Living difference is inherently
unstable.
BERLIN JOURNAL: Lets return to the ques-
tion of reframing Chinas role in global
history.
GEYER: Western opinion entered the twenti-
eth century with a rm belief in a hierarchy
of races, and the question was whether or
not some of them could adapt, catch up
with the Western model, and what would
happen with the rest. We might make
a normative argument and say that this
point of view is inappropriate (as Martha
Nussbaum claims), because it denies the
potential in all humans. Be that as it may,
the argument about a racial order of the
world has simply been overtaken by reality.
China is a thoroughly modern nation. The
question whether or not the Chinese, qua
civilization, had it in themselves to indus-
trialize is simply ridiculous.
BRIGHT: The bottom line is this: when the
global condition rst took shape in the
course of the nineteenth century, it was
understood, narrated, and ordered accord-
ing to prevailing thought conventions, all
of which hinged on the surging power
of Western production and destruction,
on an imperial division of labor, and on
notions of development and civiliza-
tion that ordered racial hierarchies and
treated industrialization as the desired
destination. In this narrative, moreover,
the catch-up development of the rest
in the shadow of the West was seen to
be a hugely challenging, if not impos-
sible task with China and India slipping
over the horizon into backwardness and
HEIMWEH, WHEN TAKEN
TO MEAN A YEARNING FOR AN
UNEQUIVOCAL IDENTITY, IS AN
EXTRAORDINARILY FORCE IN A
GLOBAL WORLD.
BRIGHT: One of the epistemological novel-
ties of that conversation is that the subject
position, the place from which you speak, is
itself shaped by our multilayered existence.
Freud once likened the mind to Rome, with
its long and varied past in which nothing
once constructed had vanished, and all ear-
lier stages of its existence survived along-
side the present iteration. Where a palazzo
now stands would also be an ancient
temple, and so forth the beholder need
only ip focus to see one or the other.
Globality may be a matter of living with dif-
ference (in the presence of all others), but
dependency. These narrative tropes of
divergence do not project well into the
twenty-rst century. However persua-
sive they once were, the global condition
which initially engendered them has
moved onto new terrain.
GEYER: Hence, at the beginning of the
twenty-rst century, we cannot act as if
we were still in the nineteenth, or as if all
it takes to explain our world is to spin out
the conventions of thought that have now
been so clearly surpassed. Rather, we have
to gather the experience of that century
and its globality into a history that enables
us to rethink where we come from and
how we got to where we are. We need new
thinking, a new conversation.
BERLIN JOURNAL: The tentative title of
your book is The Global Condition in the
Long Twentieth Century. Im curious about
your choice of phrasing. Condition is a
word that can connote burden or struggle:
a health condition, the human condition:
what prompted your wording here, rather
than a more predictable term like global-
ism or global history?
BRIGHT: We make up our lives in condi-
tions not of our own making, but that are
given. These givens can be contested and
changed, but they also frame options and
possibilities. We hold that the global is a
condition of our lives not the only condi-
tion, perhaps not the all-pervasive or deter-
mining one but one that frames choices
and challenges.
Put another way, globalization is not
just about expansion, whether of markets
or states a narrative that must always be
anchored somewhere and was typically
centered on the West or Europe; nor is it
just about connections and exchange over
long distances, the webs and networks of
interconnectivity that girdle the globe. At
some point (when is what historians debate)
we crossed a threshold, where the language
of expansion (diffusion) and connection
(linkage) gave way to an interior space of
activity and contestation in which everyone
is aware of all others potentially engaged
with all others and increasingly so, in real
time and direct encounters. We come to
deal not just with expansion or connection
but with the effects of connectivity. We nd
ourselves inside a common framework
of reference and of action, a context of deci-
sions and desires that applies to all. This is
something that conditions us all.
The images in this article are from Berlin-based British artist Tacita Deans FILM,
a monumental 11-minute silent 35mm lm. FILM was recently projected onto a
13-meter-tall white monolith at the end of the Turbine Hall at Londons Tate Modern
from October 11, 2011 to March 11, 2012. The piece celebrates the masterful yet
increasingly obsolescent techniques of analogue lmmaking in the midst of the
digital age. Deans critically acclaimed vision includes cinematic images drawn
from the natural and urban worlds, and applies mechanical techniques whose
poetic abilities to snatch the subtle dance of light and shade remain unsurpassed.
FILM was made into an eponymous book, replete with sketches from Deans note-
book, many of which reveal the artists ideas for hand-coloring and physical over-
lay, just two of the techniques that went into producing this masterful paean to a
threatened medium.
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GEYER: Global history is what we do. It is
our discipline. Globalism would suggest
a worldview like any such ism (such as
nationalism) or possibly a world picture,
which would suggest a metaphysics of our
age if we follow the Heideggerian meaning
of that term. Then again, the global condi-
tion is more than a sound bite. It does refer
to a way of being, which in its most gen-
eral way can be described as an enmesh-
ment of all with all in which potentially
everyone is in the presence of others, often
very far away. These others manifest
themselves as persons (such as migrant
families sending home remittances or
solving family problems in long-distance
telephone conversations) or as enablements
or constraints on your ability to act as you
wish (as the Greeks have discovered lately),
or as deadly force (in the case of remote-
guided drones). It is a condition of limited
autonomy.
BRIGHT: Michaels description of the global
condition as a way of being is crucial
because so much of the hype about glo-
balization focuses on material objects and
hinges on the world coming together in a
burst of technology that is seen as both sud-
den and very recent. When we began work-
ing together, global studies was dominated
by economists and social scientists xated
on the present, who tended to put history
aside and preferred to use rupture talk to
detach the present from the past. Needless
to say, the rapid intensication and expan-
sion of communications networks is a key
feature of the late twentieth century and
it both enables and constrains the pro-
cess of enmeshment in our time. It is, in
other words, an aspect of a more general
condition.
But when did this general condition fall
into place? As historians entered the discus-
sion about globalization, they tended to turn
away from the present and go back in time
some went way back to argue that there
was nothing fundamentally new going on
that globalization or global interconnectivity
has always already been happening and that
continuity trumped rupture. To explain
the present condition, all you needed (in
English) was a string of er words as
things, long in place, accelerated going
faster, becoming denser, driving deeper, etc.
We didnt want our study of the present con-
dition to come at (or as) the end of history,
or to dangle it in its aftermath; we wanted
to anchor globality in a history, but we also
want to preserve the sense of rupture giv-
ing emphasis to the unprecedented and
untoward nature of this global condition.
GEYER: In short, innity is not a good cure
for short-sightedness. Our solution is
twofold and leaves aside the very grand
questions of what is nowadays called deep
history: the study of the shifts in human
development and the rise, over eons, of the
Anthropocene, or the age of humans. We
suggest, rst, that globalization is bet-
ter understood as a process over several
centuries of expansion and interaction, in
which all parts of the world became not
only keenly aware of each other and occa-
sionally ran into and across each other, but
began to share crucial information. (Is
pasta Chinese? Is the gunpowder revolution
Dutch?) Still, it was a process of arms-length
appropriations with interlocutors and
intermediaries, even when and where it cut
IN SHORT, INFINITY IS
NOT A GOOD CURE FOR
SHORT-SIGHTEDNESS.
deeply, as in the case of the slave trade. This
growth of intermediation, colonization, and,
not least, observation (Chinese penetrations
into the far west of Central Asia are just as
important as the Western journeys of mari-
time discovery) points to the fact that the
global condition is the product of a long
process of continuous conditioning.
We then suggest, second, that there
is a moment of transition, not simply an
upgrade but an overhaul of this globaliza-
tion-conditioning. A threshold was crossed
when the room for maneuver had dimin-
ished to a point where zones of contact were
no longer out there between autonomous
regions or empires, but deep within. The
question then becomes one of incorporat-
ing the world or being incorporated into
it and this struggle over what we call the
terms of global engagement becomes the
central feature of the global condition. We
argue that the moment in which this global
condition takes hold is in the latter part of
the nineteenth century.
BERLIN JOURNAL: How has your collaborative
work on global history shaped your expecta-
tions for the twenty-rst century? Do you
believe that the trends bringing cultures
into greater contact with one another will
continue, or that there will rather be an
isolationist reaction from certain nations or
regions?
BRIGHT: How has world history been for
you? Has it been an upward movement
of advancement, from the slime to the
sublime? Or has it been a story of disap-
pointment and retreat a failure to rise to
possibilities or to realize potentials? One of
the problems with doing global history is
that teleology easily gets smuggled into the
narrative. When globalization was discov-
ered twenty-some years ago, world history
got realigned as the long back story to that
outcome; if there is some isolationist reac-
tion or the EU collapses all the promise
of deeper global integration will be shown
to have bumps and interruptions even
to have been a chimera. It is this sort of
rewriting of the narrative from the immedi-
ate present that we have to avoid, even as we
try to write a history of the present.
Manfred Kossok once pointed out that
we can no longer anticipate the future
solely through reasoning by analogy or by
extrapolating from the experience of pre-
vious generations. A linear continuation
of previously existing trends or experi-
ences is simply impossible. Western-like
development cannot become the global
norm, and we have yet to imagine the as yet
unthought-of alternative. Knowing this
frames how we shape a history of globality.
In our view, a global condition that took
shape in the course of the nineteenth cen-
tury was occasioned, in part, by the tremen-
dous surge in European/Western capaci-
ties of production and destruction and,
also, in part, by the simultaneous crisis
of political power and social reproduction
in formerly distinct regions and centers
around the world. The great divergence was
accompanied by a parallel, equally great
convergence in which the histories of
all ploughed into one another, and people
everywhere had to change in order to go
on being who they were. And such a trans-
formation could only be made through a
greater engagement with all others.
In this new condition, certain conven-
tions of thought and strategies of self-
strengthening emerged on all sides which
shaped the terms of global engagement in
the century that followed. Our argument
is that these strategies (in which growth,
expansion, and development were key words;
and developed and underdeveloped; advanced
and backward; civilized and barbarous were
key organizing principles) have run their
course, and in the last quarter century new
terms of globality of the engagement of
all with all have begun to take shape. Our
job as historians is to understand how the
global condition came to be ordered or orga-
nized in the last century what happened
to these terms of order in the recent past
and how they are now being renegotiated
and adapted to new circumstances. We will
go into the future as if sitting in a rowboat,
facing backwards and getting our bearings
or direction from sight lines behind us.
GEYER: Could we, sitting in the proverbial
rowboat, go over a cliff? Yes, for sure, and
it would not be the rst dark age or time of
troubles in history, and we would expect
future historians to then tell us much later
that the dark age was not so dark after all
or that the trouble was ultimately worth it.
But much as I wish I could tell you with his-
torical certainty that the end of the world
is coming, I would also have to concede
that historians ability to foretell the future
is about the same as that of any academic
economist. However, we can tell a few
things by looking at past experience, even if
extrapolating the future from the past leads
nowhere.
For example, in the long twentieth centu-
ry we have seen some very powerful global
actors emerge the British, the Americans,
possibly the Chinese. Historians tend to
think of them as empires, and there is a
long debate about the continuities of such
empires and what distinguishes them
from nation states. Public opinion in the
US is rather more agitated over what might
appear to be an American decline whether
it is real, the effect of wrong politics, or a
kind of inadvertent shift from Atlantic to
Pacic or onwards to East Asian dominance.
All this is well and good, and we can specu-
late as much as everyone else about the rise
and fall of empires.
But the strange thing about the twenti-
eth century is that even the dominance of
the most powerful empires was eeting. It
didnt help the British that they had the most
far-ung empire of all time at the beginning
of the twentieth century. By the third quar-
ter of the century they were barely hanging
on to the Falkland Islands and the empire
had come to live in the Home Counties. At
the beginning of the century it could also
be said that the British had the capability,
beyond empire, to piece together a regime
of world order that was extraordinarily capa-
cious. It incorporated nations and peoples,
commerce and production, ideas and tech-
nologies that came from many sides and that
stretched across the entire world albeit
unevenly and unequally and with a nasty
racial tint. Britain could aspire to be a hege-
mon and to promulgate rules of global order.
But within a half-century they lost it.
The Americans picked up the pieces, but
it is inadequate to say that they continued
where the British left off. For one thing,
the transition was extraordinarily violent
(though this was largely a matter of third
parties like the Germans and the Japanese,
as well as the Russians); and for another
the American regime of ordering was quite
profoundly different from the British one,
built on the alignment and coordination
Innovation for better health. Our commitment is to bring to
patients around the world quality medicines for use in diag
nosing, combating and preventing disease. Every day we work
against time, researching new pathways, new molecules, new
technologies complementing our own capabilities with exper
tise of innovative partners from science and industry.
The success of this work is evidenced in new med i cines for
areas with signifcant unmet medical need such as oncology,
cardiovascular and blood diseases, as well as gynecology and
ophthalmology. Our aim is a better quality of life for all.
You need commitment, focus and passion to nd new ways to
ght the diseases of this world: innovation is at the heart of it.
www.bayerhealthcare.com
www.bayerpharma.com
29407011_BHC_Imageanzeige_210x135mm_RZ.indd 1 29.08.11 12:33
WE WILL GO INTO THE FUTURE AS IF SITTING IN A ROWBOAT,
FACING BACKWARDS AND GETTING OUR BEARINGS OR DIRECTION
FROM SIGHT LINES BEHIND US.
of nations, rather than direct rule, and
enforced with far greater military power
and economic resources. Yet the American
ability to draw together the world was also
a temporary affair. Whether it is now done
for in the second decade of the twenty-rst
century is a matter for discussion. But what
we can say with some certainty is that the
capacity to order the dense interconnections
that make up the global condition of the
long twentieth century has exceeded even
the most powerful empires and nations.
What we can do is to explore the reasons
for this striking discrepancy between the
capacity for domination, on one hand, and
the inability to order or orchestrate the
global condition, on the other.
BRIGHT: I would put the same point a little
differently. The emergence of a global
condition in the nineteenth century put
questions of order on the table: how was
the whole to be ordered? Who established
the terms? In whose interests? With what
conventions and rules? By what means
of enforcement? Several solutions were
essayed in the course of the next century
and a half both Britain and the US had
the means, briey, to try and assemble
regimes of order. Both attempts hinged
on the dominance of the West (a global
division of labor that was basically impe-
rial) and their (again brief) industrial edge.
Both attempts were contested by rival
wannabe hegemons (Germany, the Soviet
Union) and by those consigned to subordi-
nate ranks in global ordering.
In short, regimes of order were never
comprehensive, were built on conditions
that proved temporary, and were continu-
ously challenged and contested. But they
did capture a kind of global hegemony in
their day. In telling this story, I think we are
arguing (perhaps I more than Michael) that
such hegemonic essays in global ordering
are no longer possible that the conditions
of globality and the terms of engagement
that enabled the British and American
essays in ordering have changed that the
terms of global enmeshment are currently
being renegotiated in ways that dont allow
a single power to pretend to anchor a global
regime. But the question of order remains
on the table.
GEYER: The global condition is an artice
and, as such, it is easily destroyed. While
our mind may be conditioned to think of
such destructions as a cosmic process (as
an apocalypse), they typically happen
piecemeal small disorientations, local
vertigos reverberating globally. They are
potentially dangerous precisely because
they come from within.
BERLIN JOURNAL: Youve been writing
together for over thirty years. What prompt-
ed you to take this route?
BRIGHT: We did not plan a lifelong col-
laboration. It happened. It began as we
taught a course together in the 1980s at the
University of Michigan trying to sort out
how to develop a global perspective on the
twentieth century. In the continuing con-
versations that emerged from that work, we
ONE OF THE PROBLEMS
WITH DOING GLOBAL HISTORY IS
THAT TELEOLOGY EASILY GETS
SMUGGLED INTO THE NARRATIVE.
Innovation for better health. Our commitment is to bring to
patients around the world quality medicines for use in diag
nosing, combating and preventing disease. Every day we work
against time, researching new pathways, new molecules, new
technologies complementing our own capabilities with exper
tise of innovative partners from science and industry.
The success of this work is evidenced in new med i cines for
areas with signifcant unmet medical need such as oncology,
cardiovascular and blood diseases, as well as gynecology and
ophthalmology. Our aim is a better quality of life for all.
You need commitment, focus and passion to nd new ways to
ght the diseases of this world: innovation is at the heart of it.
www.bayerhealthcare.com
www.bayerpharma.com
29407011_BHC_Imageanzeige_210x135mm_RZ.indd 1 29.08.11 12:33
found we had lines of thinking and areas of
profound alignment (not to say, necessar-
ily, agreement) that proved powerful for us
both. Even now, years later, we can go for
months without much contact and then, in
meeting again, reconnect those ligaments
of conversation almost instantly. Thats a
key baseline of the collaboration.
The other key ingredient is that we have
different strengths and weve found ways to
draw on them collaboratively. Its become a
project that neither of us could do nearly so
well by ourselves. At different times, on dif-
ferent projects, one or the other of us will
take the lead write rst set the direction;
but before its done after multiple drafts
and stabs at clarity are exchanged the
nal piece will combine our reciprocal
strengths (and no doubt expose our collec-
tive blinkers and limitations).
GEYER: We write at different speeds and
under different circumstances, which
makes the enterprise trying at times. We
also write with different temperaments,
although thats surprisingly less of an issue.
But the bottom line is that we are better
doing this global history deux than indi-
vidually. It is not so much that two people
know more than one, though it may well
be the case that global history requires the
expertise of many and, hence, requires
teamwork. But amassing knowledge and
skill sets is one thing. In my mind it is far
more important that global history requires
Urteilskraft the ability to judge and judg-
ment is the outcome of debate, among us,
among fellow scholars across regions and
disciplines (though never of everybody,
because otherwise there would be no begin-
ning), and potentially with global audiences.
But, of course, you have to have the book
written before you engage the latter and,
hence, the colloquy of two and whoever else
wants to join in is an essential prerequisite.
BERLIN JOURNAL: Do you anticipate a global
audience for the book?
BRIGHT: There are communities of scholars
worldwide working on global history, who
we hope will nd this book worth reading.
Finding ways to talk across cultures and
languages about a predicament is as tricky
for historians as it is for journalists, politi-
cians, and ordinary folks.
The test will be if we can generate other
such histories that take up the thread and
spin it out from their respective end. The
reception of our previous work suggests
that the interest exists.
If someone like Lawrence Summers, who
should know better, argues that learning for-
eign languages is a waste of money (because
everyone speaks English anyway) and dis-
courages traveling to Berlin for six months
because it is so much more efcient to work
in an American university library (which
it is), he provides us with the perfect recipe
of how not to succeed. Negotiating differ-
ences and that includes jostling with your
own globality is a basic skill for living in a
global world and the practical and theoretical
knowledge that is needed in order to act in it.
Charles Bright is the Arthur J. Thurnau
Professor of History at the University
of Michigan and the spring 2012 Ellen
Maria Gorrissen Fellow at the Academy.
Michael Geyer is the Samuel N. Harper
Professor of German and European
History at the University of Chicago
and the spring 2012 Axel Springer
Fellow at the Academy.
The American Academy in Berlin invites applications
for its residential fellowships for 2o13 /14, as well as early
applications for the academic years 2o14 /15 and 2o15 /16.
The deadline is Friday, September 28, 2012. Applications
may be submitted online (from June 2o12) or mailed to the
Berlin ofce.
The Academy welcomes applications from both emerging
and established scholars, as well as from writers and policy
professionals who wish to engage in independent study in
Berlin. Approximately 26 Berlin Prizes are conferred annually.
Past recipients have included historians, economists, poets
and novelists, journalists, legal scholars, anthropologists,
musicologists, and public policy experts, among others. The
Academy does not grant fellowships in the natural sciences.
Fellowships are typically awarded for an academic semester
or, on occasion, an entire academic year. Bosch Fellowships
in Public Policy are available for shorter stays of six to eight
weeks. Fellowship benets include round-trip airfare, partial
board, a $5,ooo monthly stipend, and accommodations at
the Academys lakeside Hans Arnhold Center, in Berlins
Wannsee district.
Fellowships are awarded to US residents only. US citizenship
is not required; American expatriates are not eligible.
A Ph.D. is required of candidates in academic disciplines.
Following a peer-reviewed screening process, an
independent selection committee reviews nalist applica-
tions. The 2o13 /14 Berlin Prizes will be announced
in late February 2o13.
For further information, please see:
www.americanacademy.de
or contact:
Attn: Fellows Selection
Am Sandwerder 17 19
141o9 Berlin Germany
Phone +49 (3o) 8o4 83 - 1o6
Fax +49 (3o) 8o4 83 - 111
cs@americanacademy.de
The Berlin Prize
Call for Applications

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WE ARE GRATEFUL TO
im Stifterverband fr die Deutsche Wissenschaft
FOR ITS
GENEROUS SUPPORT OF
THE BERLIN JOURNAL
AND THE
AMERICAN ACADEMY IN BERLIN.
In this issue:
Peter L. Lindseth
Michael Ignatieff
Elizabeth Povinelli
Richard Deming
Karen Russell
David Remnick
Katherine Boo
Daniel Hobbins
Nicholas Eberstadt
Michael Geyer
Charles Bright
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A Magazine from the American Academy in Berlin | Number Twenty-Two | Spring 2012
THE BERLIN JOURNAL

Berlin Journal 22

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