The price of friendship

The debate about the EU referendum appears to have had mainly one effect; to turn most people off politics. By now, I actually dread turning on the radio in the morning to listen to the Today programme, afraid that I will have to hear one more time how the economy will tank if Britain dares to go it alone, or how those pesky immigrants will invade Sutton Coldfield if we stay in the European Union.

The battle lines are well and truly drawn and both sides have settled on the most soporific arguments they could muster. I have previously written HERE about how difficult it is for anybody living in Britain to actually develop a feeling for European integration, let alone a positive sentiment towards those French drinking their lovely wine just across the channel. The main reason is that Britain is an island and, here, borders are not just a function of us being outside Schengen but a simple fact of geography. That is different for a French popping over to his neighbouring village which happens to be in Belgium, to stock up on some cheese (to continue the national stereotyping). Borders signal where our ability to move ends, and there could not be a stronger signal than a big fat cold mass of water, only to be overcome by some madcap celebrity in the pursuit of a charitable cause.

Bringing Europe closer by swimming - David Walliams in the Channel

In short, what is missing in the debate is the experience of living in Europe, as living with others that are different yet are also the same. In that vein, I would like to point to a dimension of us being in Europe that should matter to anybody thinking about where to put their cross in the referendum. I am talking about the incredible privilege to be surrounded by friends, who are willing to listen and debate with us what would and should happen in the common space we inhabit: Europe.

Many of us may take this for granted yet it is nothing but. The European Union has created and maintained the institutions which gives the British government the ability to articulate its demands, wishes and desires to its European friends. And Europe, above all, has developed an enormous stock of  mutual trust that allows us and our European neighbours to call each other friends, for good or ill. That should count as something. How unique this is in foreign relations can be seen by looking across at the recent spat between Venezuela and its neighbours. Yes, Europe costs. But it gives us so much more: friends who do not question our motifs when we raise an issue. That's something to celebrate, and to preserve.

From myth to history and back - Marie Arana's Bolivar

Historical biography is probably the most difficult of historiographical genres. The early examples of (auto-) biography were little more than defensive treatises, rebutting accusations by real or perceived enemies of progress. Augustus' Res Gestae falls into this category and historians have sharpened their critical tools on the interpretation of it. 

As the religious wars kicked off in Europe and printing opened up new possibilities of publicising opinions, history often melted into something akin to propaganda and, again, it was the difficult job of historians to subsequently distil fact from fiction. Biography suffers from a heightened sense of all these ills. 

At the centre of the biography stands the person, and the outward line of events often casts little light on the inner life of the subject in question. The main preoccupation of readers however is not the event. We are not so much interested in knowing that Caesar crossed the Rubicon but what he thought when he saw Cleopatra. On top of that, people have a strong urge to cast themselves in a good light and few biographers can resist the pressure to write with critical distance about somebody they have likely chosen because they liked them in the first place. 

In constructing any narrative historians usually have two options. They either stick to the line of events which commonly delivers taut and paced accounts of what happened or they exhaust the subject matter in minute details, immersing and potentially drowning the account in quotes. The former produces annals rather than history, the latter usually produces boredom. 

Peter Longerich's Heinrich Himmler biography is rich in detail, so rich in fact that it swells to more than a thousand pages and whilst the reader gets a good understanding of every nook and cranny of Himmler's warped thinking through plenty of quotes, the overall picture is lost and the narrative resembles more a zig-zag path to historical oblivion. 

The trick of course is to use the material in the particular context in the most appropriate way. Quoting Himmler's deluded ruminations about races only confirm in the reader's mind that he had a fairly tenuous grip on reality, but insights into deluded minds rarely tell us much about what happened and why. 

Marie Arana's biography of Bolivar is of the other category. Arana does not like to busy the reader with the exhaustive interpretative turns of previous scholarship and she delivers a fast paced narrative of the events. Quickly, however the reader loses sight of Bolivar the person and Arana's partiality becomes a problem. 

Much of this is due to a creeping sense that Arana uses different terminology when describing the warring factions because she preconceives a righteousness in the liberating cause. As the narrative proceeds and Bolivar's early attempts to liberate Venezuela falter, everyone who opposes him becomes a traitor in Arana's account. 

Those who dare argue a different course are 'scheming' while Bolivar himself simply 'lacks genuine friends'. By page 170, Bolivar's righteousness is a function of the end he wants to achieve, and everything that may tempt other historians into a stance of critical distance (for example Bolivar's sexual preference for extremely young girls which he cast aside as soon as he 'conquered' them) is passed over. 

The result is a one dimensional account of the hero himself and Arana's narrative, though fast-paced, becomes difficult to trust. As the slave rebellion enters the picture this lack of critical distance becomes deeply troubling. Bolivar is by now more of a cut-out frame rather than a real person and the language Arana uses to describe the atrocities on all sides is more disturbing. Bove and his men 'revel' in the killings, while Bolivar is 'bewildered' by the storm of violence. 

Arana of course has a problem here given that it was Bolivar who unleashed the forces he could not control with his uncompromising call for the murder of all Spaniards. The proclamation still produces heated discussions amongst historians but Arana 'neutralises' it by attributing it to Bolivar's political 'naivite'. 

The section on Bove's rebellion also makes uncomfortable reading for the racial undertones that creep into Arana's writing. Bove and his men (mainly black and mixed raced) are blood thirsty and cruel by nature, whereas Bolivar and his men are civilised heros fighting for a righteous cause. 

What is lost in this teleological writing is an appreciation for the complexity of the civil war and the difficult position of those caught in it. At some point, Arana gives a glimpse of it when she mentions that some of the fighters easily changed sides up to ten times during the struggle, usually aligning themselves with the party of power. 

In short, the reader gradually grows suspicious of Arana's lack of nuance and critical distance. Most importantly, what is often lost in this sympathetic historical writing is Bolivar the person. Starting with his 'vow to rid Venezuela' of the Spaniards on Monte Sacro in Italy, Arana never manages to lift the mythical veil to glimpse the real person behind. Beginning with his pledge in Italy, Bolivar's life is a path of glory walked by a living saint while virgins are voluntarily throwing themselves in his way (or their fathers trying to throw them in his way to get Bolivar's attention), only temporarily frustrated by evil traitors and agents of Spain. 

Crafting certainty out of doubt - Golo Mann in 1990

The master of biographical writing was of course Golo Mann, who delivered an unsurpassed account of a real person in 'Wallenstein' that had all signs of human frailty and self-doubt. Mann's prose oscillates between historiographical certainty and questioning distance which is curiously mirrored in the actions of Wallenstein himself. Through this historiographical device, Mann made a virtue of the biggest shortcoming of biographical writing, that we can never know the mind of the other. His writing circles the subject matter ever more closely until the established facts are just about holding on to the human perceptions of them. 

Mann was of course aware that this was a historiographical trick. In a sense, he may have been simply lucky in his choice of subject matter. Wallenstein may have been a more tortured personality than Bolivar. But then again perhaps not. Arana's biography cannot tell us either way. What we do know is that writing a biography that turns people into one dimensional canvasses for our projections approximates myth rather than history. In other words, Arana's work gives us 'Res Gestae' rather than the man himself. 

The toxic legacy of Chavez

As Venezuela comes to terms with the death of Hugo Chavez, the beatification process of its former president has already started. Whatever his achievements are in terms of widening social welfare programmes to the poorest and improving access to health care and education, his followers will need his name and aura to continue his political programme of Bolivarian socialism.

Chavez in socialist pose

You may applaud or criticise Chavez for the way he has changed the country yet one misgiving I always feel when a person assumes such a central role in any political movement is that his (or her) apparent indispensability does not bode well for rational debate about future choices. The tenor of his supporters has been that they have 'lost a father'. I am not sure politicians should be 'fathers' of their electorate. It seems to me that such a role implies the subversion of the dispensability of politicians who temporarily and provisionally hold an office by virtue of them being elected.

Chavez has played the card of infallibility repeatedly, infusing his form of 'chavismo' or Bolivarian socialism with something akin to religious sentiment bordering on providence. Indeed, one may argue that this is a feature of many types of socialism where the ideological tenets usually lack political legitimacy or public support and hence cannot be exposed to reasoned argument and open debate.

The central role Chavez played himself and his charisma may just radiate strongly enough into the near future to ensure that his followers elect the current Vice-President Maduro, somebody Chavez personally anointed as his successor before his death. However, with the immediate succession resolved, Venezuelans will have to confront the harsh reality of open politics, questioning the fundamentals of Chavismo and submitting them to public debate. If they fail to do this they may preserve 'Chavismo' but it will be an ideology in aspic.