Synthetic Rancours

• Autores: Javier Ordóñez
• Localización: On Resentment.: An Interdisciplinary Workshop on The History of Emotions, 26,27, 28 October, 2011 The Louis-Jeantet Auditorium, Geneva / coord. por Dolores Martín Moruno, Javier Moscoso Sarabia, Bernardino Fantini, 2011, pág. 17
• Idioma: español
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • This lecture deals with an episode involving the relationships between emotions and wars. Since the poet converted the rage of Achilles into a symbol of the Trojan War, emotions have formed a part of wartime stories.

    Without going back so far in time, this conference will try to characterize one special emotion: rancour. An emotion that has gained prominence progressively in the conflicts that have afflicted Europe since the French Revolution, and which emerged at the beginning of the 20 th century, and that was fed by all the resentment that the successful isms of the century brought about.

    Wars have always needed emotional stimulus. Without a doubt some were represented by the nobleness of the hero, or by the altruism of those that died young or by the love towards one�s country represented by the dictum dulce et decorum est pro patria mori or the less subtle everything for my country. Nevertheless, if these emotions were enough to sustain wars in the not too distant past, which is very doubtful indeed, they were not sufficient to sustain the state of wars that arose, at least from the beginning of the 20 th century. The War of 1914, called "The Great" because it required the mobilization of special resentments, in the form of extreme or rancours. The problem with emotions that sustain the spirit to keep fighting is that this state of emotions can be short-lived, and take the shape of transitory states of mind. All of the civil societies involved in the conflict of 1914 knew that it was or convenient to maintain the resentments and rancours continuously, from before the outbreak of war until after victory is achieved, because wars are followed by other wars with a constant regularity.

    How this was achieved is the object of this lecture. This problem often is dealt with by supposing that the procedure was to let grow the underlying resentment of any group towards that which is different, as a generator of aggression, and converting it into an enemy. This point of view considers that individuals have natural resentments that resonate during conflicts, in a way analogous to how Goethe explained the dynamics of elective affinities. According to this point of view, the processes that cultivated resentment in the societies at the beginning of the 20 th century only needed the catalysis of propaganda to form the necessary rancour in order to sustain and justify, even with joy, such bloody conflicts.

    In this lecture the idea will be defended that this point of view is not only incomplete, but that it is very naïve.

    In this article the idea will defended that since the beginning of the 20 th century the forms of growing emotions to sustain the conflicts followed different dynamics, from the one described above. Resentments did not resonate in a natural way. Emotional chemistry did not follow the pattern established by the old theory of affinities. The chemistry of our era gives us better information in order to understand the strategy that was followed. In the same way that the concept of Ersatz was brought about in chemical production, a type of Ersatz was developed for emotions. The chemical industry considered a radical breakthrough being able to substitute natural components (always very scarce) by synthetic ones, and by which mass industrial production changed the relationships between industries and the societies that would later enter into war. In an analogous way this occurred with emotions, which are so necessary to unite societies in conflict, but are always too scarce and often decidedly esthetic. It became necessary to replace natural emotions with synthetic ones, an emotional Ersatz that could implant mass-produced rancours for the masses. These synthetic resentments had to be of the best quality to insure not only the emergence of the war of 1914 but of the subsequent wars. That this was achieved is evident, considering the development of the conflicts of the 20 th century and their typology. This lecture will try to unravel how this Ersatz, which was one of the most eloquent mass emotional processes of the century, came to be.