The Question of the Degradation of War (paper for Seminar on Gender and War, Warwick 28th May 2004) excerpt from "Friendship, Interiority and Mysticism" (2007)

Simone Weil And the Questions of Resistance to the Degradation of War The late Michelle Murray compiled some notes on Simone Weil, before her own tragic premature death at the age of 40. I shall use these to begin my paper, although there is an industry at work, since the 1930s on the life and death of Simone Weil. Murray’s insights are valuable, because she places Weil on the feminist grid, which other writers might not – since overtly it seems that Simone Weil rejected all things female in herself. Her mother, Selma, encouraged her boyishness by making her feel that equality with her brilliant brother Andre, could be had through imitativeness. By using the tropes of androgyny, anorexia and abstention as political metaphors, Michelle Murray argues that Weil was a tragic activist against the industrialism of war. This is a more empathetic reading than that of Thomas Nevin’s writings, which suggest that Simone Weil suffered from penis envy, so she exchanged the master discourse of the Lyceums, including the Normale Superieure, for factory work,which embodied emasculation and servility. From there to mysticism and to Catholicism is not a far leap! Biographers tend to bracket her life and work into the following categories 1. Radical Student Activism (the so called Red Virgin period, when she was also called “The Categorical Imperative in Skirts”). 2. The Teaching at Lycee and Trade Union Period. 3. The Factory Period. 4. The Refugee/Resistance period It is the last that Murray handles, and where this story begins. Simone came to London, after having spent four months in New York, settling in her parents, who had escaped with her via Casablanca in 1942. Her aim was to return to France at the earliest, as she had a nurses - on- the front programme which she hoped to persuade the Free French Forces to implement. In England, Michelle Murray writes, “isolated from her family, her country, and all familiar surrounding, Simone nevertheless devoted herself to France and to returning to France, whatever the risks” (George Abbot White, 1981: 25). She told her parents that she was in love with London, in love with England, that the people here had known tragedy, but not so as to dull them, which had been the case of France. She wrote L’Enraciment, or the Need for Roots, during this time, taking the task set to her by the Free French very seriously. “During those months of 1943 - first the damp winter months, then the glorious early spring which was one of the finest in memory sending Londoners pouring out to what undamaged parks remained and softening the ruins with growths of flowering weeds – Simone Weil was working on the manuscript. She had worn herself out, begging the Free French in London to allow herself to parachute into France as an agent, a contact person, an intellectual liaison between the Resistance and the world outside. And she could not understand their refusal. She did not regard her poor health, blinding headaches and physical fragility as any handicap in such a mission” (ibid 50,51). Michelle Murray argues that Simone was the stereotype in her looks and behaviour of Jewish female intellectualism, a visible target for the Vichy government, and the Germans. The Free French gave her a task which they thought would keep her quiet, but she worked ferociously to produce what she called “Prelude to A Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind”. Simone had always believed in the polemical tract, but this draft is one of the finest examples of a sane, rational and generous voice. While writing this very secular, rational and powerful text, she continued steadfastly her parallel activities, which were studies of Greek mythology, Hindu shastras in Sanskrit, spiritual meditations, particularly focused on reciting the Lord’s prayer in Greek. For Sociologists, a re- reading of Emile Durkheim’s Division of Labour, and Moral Education, would provide a lucid framework for the understanding of Weil’s work. Just as we ignore many parts of Durkheim’s texts because they are are Victorian or unacceptable (size of cranium and proportion of brain for man and woman, for instance!) the same objectivity is necessary in a reading of Weil. I do not see this as a methodological problem. Durkheim was concerned with the differing types of division of labour, showing us that mechanical solidarity was integrative in a different way from organic solidarity. Like reproduces intensity. Difference produces diffusion. The State becomes the symbol of the latter type. Trade Unions would be integral forms of manufacturing solidarity, and would draw from the medieval guilds, some of their key similarities. The critique of socialism as a cry of pain does not detract from the value of the reciprocities found in primitive communism, as Marcel Mauss would later show. If we read “The Need for Roots” (1987a) against this background, the sociological validity of Simone’s tract would be manifest. It is, in its way, as powerful as The Communist Manifesto which is known to be a work of art, only this text is rooted in the idea of dialogue, collectivity, individual responsibility and the goals of social justice. It draws deeply from Marxist writng, while critiquing all forms of absolutism in collective life. The freedom and responsibility of the individual were paramount for Simone Weil. The State is Always Ready for War It is against this background, that my paper is set. War is a state, It is continuous for preparation, engagement and disengagement are modern industrial activities. Resistance is possible only through the awareness of one’s own ability to understand and thus transform the world. Bureaucracy and the Factory are thus two emblems of modernism. Thus, war embodies the hierarchical structure of these two institutions in its totality. Even if people should wish for liberty and equality, by being implicated in the machineries of war, as soldiers or miners, they cannot separate themselves from the structures of oppression by which the State, even in a democracy, marks itself as unquestionable and secret. In the process of colonization, this becomes even more apparent. Sara Ruddick in “Maternal Thinking” (1990) argues that “Very few of the men who take part in war can be said to “make war’. Most are foot soldiers and workers in the service of grand campaigns they did not design, about which they were not consulted, and which they rarely comprehend. Even within the military, the proportion of of suppliers and bureaucrats to active fighters is high.” (Ruddick 1990:152) Cannon fodder, we know, consists of very young men, conscripted because of their poverty, or their boredom, and inability to cope with civilian life, or exhibiting a youthful idealism in the cause of nationhood. Compulsory military service draws on these to communicate the ever present existence of the industry of war. The power elite locks hands, being instititutionalised in their collaboration in the war, medical and food industries. Ruddick says, “If men were so eager to be fighters, we would not need drafts, training in misogyny and macho heroes, nor would we have to entice the morally sensitive with myths of patriotic duty and just cause. Indeed, history suggests that men have an even more ambivalent relation to the fighting expected of them, than women do the mothering work for which they are said to be naturally suited” (ibid 152) Liddle and Nakajimo, in their study of gender and work in Japan, “Rising Suns, Rising Daughters” discuss the fact that political states are desperate in their search for symbolic capital, and they are competitive for legitimacy and visibility on the world stage and that they use gender and class as forms of symbolic capital to compete for global power (Liddle land Nakajima 2000).War as a form of aggression open to women has been the scandal of the long years of the Iraq war. The non responsibility of women soldiers to human rights, or rather the exact ability to enact orders displayed by them open up for observers, the War Crimes issues raised by Hannah Arendt in all her work. Liddle and Nakajima (2000) borrow from Terry Lovell’s reading of Pierre Bourdieu’s work (1984) to say that, “It is men who inherit, invest and accumulate capitals of various kinds, and convert them into symbolic capital to acquire respect, honor and power, or conversely who trade in “non convertible” currencies in “protected markets” which produce power deficits, because in the struggle for recognition of different social truths, the capitals of those who are less well armed with the resources to impose their truths are not values or acknowledged as legitimate (Liddle and Nakajima 2000:292). Thus their specific theoretical position is that gender and class cannot be separated from the events of the global political economy (ibid 30) Simone Weil, in the manner of Mary Wollstonecraft, believed that tracts were the first step towards redrafting policy and ways of thought. She believed in the power of writing as a form of activism (Visvanathan 1998). A Need for Roots is a powerful critique of war and masculinism as hierarchy, however restricting itself within gender neutrality as the metaphor for charting out the text of Human Rights. The dangers of gender neutralization we well know from the work of the feminists and Ivan Illich. Simone Weil argues that the first ability of being human is to recognize hunger in another. Human Rights – food, shelter, clothing, education, medical facility, community – these appease hunger. But there is the hunger that arises from the moral condition of humans as well.’’ This is where the question of obligations must become most evident. Privileges accrue toward oneself - obligations is towards the other. There is a dialogicity that is set up as soon as we recognize the needs of others – this would then be conversation rather then a monologue. “A man left alone in the world would have no rights, he would have only duties” (Weil 1987a: 3) There is for Weil, a dialectic between the subjectivity of rights and the objectivity of obligations. The needs of the spirit are real, for Simone Weil, for she says they are difficult to recognize or to count, but everyone knows they exist. There are the palpable and different forms of cruelty which “a conqueror may exercise over a subject population; such as massacre, mutilation, organized famine, enslavement or large-scale deportation” and there are forms of cruelty which “can injure a man’s life without injuring his body”, such as the loss of freedom, or the fear of the loss of freedom (Weil 1987a). For Weil, the collectivity is sacred in the Durkheimian sense, as are rules, and the insitiutions even more so. These institutions must be protected, they are “unique and irreplaceable” for they are our link with past generations, and are the conveyor of ideas (ibid 8). But she beckons us to beware of those collectivities which demand unspeakable sacrifices, and those “dead collectivities” which without devouring souls, don’t nourish them either (ibid 9). She recognized the difference between needs and desires, whims, fantasies and vices. “Man requires not rice or potatoes but food.” The maintenance and representation of order is paramount. Like Durkheim, there is a fragility to this position, a possibility of compromise or mitigation. Order, like symmetry can become an end in itself. The search for order she defines as a journey. This journey is often in the dark, without a light, and sometimes without a guide, demanding the ultimate sacrifice, but it is characterized by hope – it is this which makes us human and pacifist. In order, contradictions are reconciled, and there is a fine balance between antithetical poles. Hunger and appeasement, desire and waiting. For Weil, this is the ability to choose that is the greatest attribute of freedom. Yet we are encircled by rules. These rules must be comprehensible to the people who are thus bound by them. People must understand their usefulness, their applicability and their necessity. They must be simple enough, so that people who adhere to these rules are not confounded every time, they wish to apply them or think about them. This right to information, it would seem is an inherent human right for Simone Weil, as described in the Need for Roots (ibid 13). There is however a point when choice becomes an obstacle when too varied and multiple choice becomes a burden, resulting in irresponsibility. Puerility, indifference, boredom, or the fear of harming others are such obstacles. Then liberty does not feel like it is valuable. It leads to chaos. Weil contrasts this with Semitism, which is, according to her, so rule bound and egotistical that it perpetuates a particular condition of mind. From ghettoization to annihilation was the most tragic state of historical events which ran across millennia – but the Jewish state of cannon ball and flag, without a sense of obligation to the other was a fearsome proposition for Simone. Weil was loyal to ideas and fearless. Accusations of anti-Semitism by some, or conversely the regret communicated by others, that she did not convert to Christianity, did not affect her at all. For Weil, the question of hierarchy and inequality was paramount. Thus, the right to develop capacities, regardless of the accidents of birth, and the significance of maintaining ascending and descending balance in equitable terms were equally significant. She wrote in the Need for Roots “To the extent to which it is really possible for the son of farm labourer to become one day a minister, to the same extent should it really be possible for the son of a minister to become one day a farm labourer…This sort of equality, if allowed full play by itself, can make social life fluid to the point of decomposing” (ibid 17) Manual and Mental Labour – the Preoccupation. Simone Weil spent weeks harvesting grapes, tiring herself out to the extent, that one day she exclaimed, “Hell is a vineyard.” She also worked on the land of Gustave Thibon, a Catholic intellectual who gave her inspite of her many differences and conflicts with him, a loyal friendship, hospitality and shelter. He became the custodian of her notebooks, because she trusted him implicitly. Simone Weil used the idea of “proportion” which she defined as the combination of equality with inequality, and everywhere, throughout the universe, according to her, it is the sole factor making for balance. Peter Winch’s classic study of Simone Weil, using the tradition of the Notebooks, has been titled “The Just Balance” in tribute to her preoccupation with order. It is in that context of power, balance and order, that she had argued that, “Applied to the maintenance of social equilibrium, it would impose on each man, burdens corresponding to the power and well being he enjoys, and corresponding risks in cases of incapacity or neglect. The exercise of important public functions should carry with it serious personal risks”(ibid 17). Michael Ferber (who was an anti-Vietnam activist, and stood trial with Dr Spock in the Boston Area) wrote an essay on Simone Weil, which argues that soul force was an integral part of the activist stock. Force, for Weil is pitiless, but for him, soul force as evident in Gandhi and other pacifists, becomes a source of optimism. (ed Abbot White, 1981, cited on pg 81). He contrasts Hannah Arendt’s idea of forgiveness against Weil’s idea of force, for Arendt says, “Forgiveness is the exact opposite of vengeance, which acts in the form of reacting against an original trespassing, whereby far from putting an end to the consequences of the first misdeed, everybody remains bound to the process.” (ibid 83) In contrast is forgiveness, where every act is new, and unexpected, “unconditioned” by the act which provoked it”. Simone Weil argues that there must always be a critical imagination centred around the idea of ‘my country’, which is the same as ‘my nation’. “When a lot is talked about patriotism, little is heard about justice, and the sense of justice is so strong among workmen, even if they are materialist, owing to the fact that they are always under the impression that they are being deprived of it, that any form of moral education (italics mine) in which justice hardly figures cannot possibly exercise any hold over them…they always need to feel that..they are dying for something much greater, taking part in the universal struggle against injustice” (ibid 128) Moral Education which was Durkheim’s Sociological statement against forms of communal violence in France, the Dreyfus case being the catalyst, is centrally structured around collectivities, such as the nation, and parochialities such as the family. Education mediates these, and by arguing for rationality, human rights and freedom, Durkhiem compels us to understand the forms of socialization that allow us to believe in the future of Society. And why not, when the first task of Sociology is to propagate the wisdom of community. Simone Weil lived a tragic life, and a very short one, but no one forgot her, and every invitation to read her work, brings our attention to the questions of fearlessness, and the will to survival. Whether her life was cut short because of her tragic identification with those more victimized than herself, the legacy of empathy is not a small one for practitioners of Sociology today or at any other time. References Durkheim, Emile: The Division of Labour in Society, Free Press, New York and London, 1964. Moral Education. Free Press, New York, 1973. Ilich, Ivan Gender, Pantheon, New York, 1982. Liddle, Joanna and Sachiko Nakajima. Rising Suns, Rising Daughters: Gender, Class and Power in Japan, White Lotus Bangkok, and Zed books, London and New York,2000. Miles. Sian. Simone Weil: An Anthology. Penguin, London 2007. Murray, Michelle. The Jagged Edge: A Bibliographical Essay on Simone Weil. in George Abbot White(ed), Simone Weil: An Interpretation of a Life. University of Massachusetts 1981. Nevin, Thomas R. Simone Weil, A Life, Pantheon, New York, 1976 Ruddick, Sara. Maternal Thinking, Toward a Politics of Peace Ballantine Books:New York, 1990. Visvanathan, Susan. An Ethnography of Mysticism, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, 1998 Friendship, Interiority and Mysticism, Orient Blackswan, New Delhi 2007. Weil, Simone. Gravity and Grace Routledge and Kegan Paul (Ark) 1987 The Need for Roots Routledge and Kegan Paul (Ark) 1987a White, George Abbot (ed) Simone Weil: An Interpretation of a Life. University of Massachussets 1981.