[-empyre-] first intervention from my part

[Pia Holenstein]

Dear all

First I am to apologize for not filing into your flow of an engaged and fervent discussion until now. It's not easy because of the fast pace and because I missed some of the contributions, I am afraid - seems I can't find Erik's texts, on which others comment. There's another problem, more deeply bothering me and preventing me from chiming in.

I am still bewildered by the mere thought that two (or thousand) public signs of terror can look the same and be based on completely different realities.

They are not the same, not even from the outside, though, but are made to look and be judged as atrocities.

A young man hops on a bus with explosives, killing dozens of innocent travelers. Another runs over people with his car, today, in Jerusalem. A small boy throwing stones at an APC of the oppressing power parked deliberately in his village. All these are called terrorists, even the boy can get up to 20 years in prison (the bill passed last week in the Knesset). - And then on the other hand young men and women from a free western country joining a horde of retro-religious-killer-activists (and it's preposterous to call anything in that religious) to be terrorists, too. There is nothing in common.

This is why I cannot see outbreaks of violence without enquiring about the political background. It is not a matter of esthetics. Or, if it is: Decapitations in front of cameras to announce war on the western or decadent society is just so pathetic, the most blatant recourse to plainest symbols - you see I am enraged and looking for an expression: It's Kitsch.

Not that it did not terrify me, it worked on me and I was not able to watch what was meant to give an exclusive thrill the specators. A real beheading in our time, archaic and terrifying and unknown nourishment to your imagination. But I refuse to respond to it in the expected way.



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Pia Holenstein Weidmann, Dr. phil.
Bergrain 11
CH - 8910 Affoltern a. A.
0041 - 44 - 761 40 38

pia.holenstein.ch

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