From the issue dated September 28, 2001
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Our Myths of ChoiceBy RICHARD SLOTKIN
When a society suffers a profound trauma, an event that upsets its fundamental ideas about what can and should happen and challenges the authority of its basic values, its people look to their myths for precedents, invoking past experience -- embodied in their myths -- as a way of getting a handle on crisis. So far, I see two myths being deployed in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11. One is the myth of "savage war," based on the oldest U.S. myth, the myth of the frontier. The myth represents American history as an Indian war, in which white Christian civilization is opposed by a "savage" racial enemy: an enemy whose hostility to civilization is part of its nature or fundamental character; an enemy who is not just opposed to our interests but to "civilization itself." The myth also provides a recipe for countering the threat, a model of heroic action that will bring victory and resolve the crisis. The hero of this myth is the wielder of extraordinary violence: He can win only by fighting fire with fire, evil with evil, and he must fight until the enemy is exterminated or utterly subjugated. In war with such an enemy, nothing less than total victory is acceptable. The "savage war" myth is invoked in moments when Americans feel most profoundly threatened, when they feel their identity, their "manhood" or dignity, is imperiled by the moral ugliness and terrible potential power of a certain kind of antagonist. American Indians were the original group to be identified as this kind of enemy. But the same "savage war" myth has also been turned against groups of American citizens, whose race or ethnicity or political affiliation has seemed profoundly threatening. At various times in our history black people, immigrants, labor-union members, and "Reds" have been subjected to extraordinary and extra-legal violence by both private and official forces. The other myth we have invoked is the myth of the "good war," summoned by the invocation of Pearl Harbor. A revival of interest in World War II and the "greatest generation" was well under way before the terrorist attack. We have been looking to the "good war" as a mythic antidote to the decades of division and mutual rancor that followed our defeat in Vietnam. World War II is remembered as fully justified and patriotically supported, ending in total victory. We see the struggle against Nazism not only as good in itself, but as the beginning of American pre-eminence among the nations, and as the beginning of a major democratic transformation in American class and race relations. At the bottom of our reaction to a traumatic event like this is rage, grief, humiliation, and a sense of helplessness. We invoke our myths to help us begin to function again -- and they work often enough for us to continue believing in them. The danger in our present use of myth is that our myths of choice may be so at odds with reality that their imperatives can never be fulfilled. The "war" against terrorism will not be like World War II: no immediate mobilization, no certain targets; there may or may not be a territory to "liberate" or subjugate. Total victory may not be possible. To invoke the "good war" myth is to raise expectations that cannot be fulfilled, and failure will discredit both the myth itself, and the administration that invokes it (as happened in the Vietnam War). If events do not follow the course prescribed in our "good war" myth, we may revert to the "savage war" scenario -- and this is a dangerous myth. It expresses, and also empowers, the profound sense of rage we feel when we have helplessly suffered a terrible trauma, and it rationalizes a limitless, ruthless, and perhaps irrational use of force against those nations and peoples associated with our enemies. Moreover, the rage and the broad license for "extraordinary violence" that this myth expresses typically turns against domestic victims when it meets frustration. The persecution of German-Americans in World War I and Japanese-Americans in World War II, and the Red scares that followed both world wars, are indicative of these dangers. Richard Slotkin is a professor of history at Wesleyan University. http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Page: B11
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Copyright © 2001 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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Reflections on the Fractured Landscape |
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