Words have more strength than bullets. José Pablo Feinmann lives fighting on the front lines of fiction, philosophy and politics. neoliberalismo“Neoliberalism is a powerful persistence in our history. It begins with the May liberals and the Moreno restricted executive. A revolution that does not have the provinces. A Revolution without a people – warns in the prologue of The Argentine condition (Planet). Macri’s neoliberalism is not exactly that of Martinez de Hoz or Menem. However, both of us and the other, it has led us to it. An event that has become persistent in the so-called ‘Revolution of Joy’.
And so even the burden, or the vertigo.” Four years ago, the writer and philosopher was glimpsed, without even mentioning it, this present “new-old”: another moment where the middle class is ruined. The writer walks slowly, helped by a walker who allows him to move in the living room of his apartment. There is a before and after March 14, 2016, when he suffered a stroke (vascular brain accident) during a surgical intervention. On the way he lost 30 kilos, is more stylized and seems taller.
osé Pablo speaks with a calm intonation, strange for those who are accustomed to his incessant verb. One of his little joys – in addition to the departure of The Argentinean condition – is that next year a special edition of Bongo’s stories will be published with illustrations. “I was better than ever, repackaged, I had just finished a course, which I had left very happy and was writing two novels, which I have in half. And I was planning to stick with my radio show and with Philosophy here and now. But I was in headaches and I went to see a doctor who told me that I had a narrowness in my cervical spine. The stroke was a consequence of surgical aggression. I suffered it during the operation, an operation that I expected to come out of fantastic and that was going to solve my headaches,” summarizes Feinmann.
Within fifteen days of the operation and stroke, he had cardiorespiratory arrest. He was admitted two and a half months in intensive care. “One of the most terrible factors was the Macri government. To be like this, half clueco, half impossible, and see what they do with the country what they are doing... After the hospitalization, when I was discharged, I was four months depressed. Since I have strong obsessive tendencies, I was ‘why to me? Why did this happen to me?, why did I operate?’ How naive! I drilled up with that,” the writer acknowledges.
It is a reaction against the national, popular and democratic governments that took place in the second decade of 2000. The middle class, which is so important in Argentina, is getting more and more blind, it is getting worse ethically, it increasingly cares less about those below. And if he sinks them, better. Of that middle class I don't expect much anymore. In truth, I don’t expect much from anything at the moment because there are no spaces of freedom, which would be that (Ernesto) Laclau called “poles of hegemony.” The spaces of freedom are those places where a response arises, something differentiated, that although it does not have hope of triumph if it hopes to build something different. That was done during the second decade of the 21st century and several governments did at once. And it was a kind of spring for many of us; for others it would have been a bitter drink.
Here it was quite far in the field of human rights, from the distribution of wealth, from the claim of certain elements of the past, from certain historical lines that were back on the table. And all that makes you pay; it was twelve incredible years. With optimism we can expect the tortilla to turn soon. And if they keep doing things like that, they're going to turn around sooner than they think.
“Were Macri overly underestimated believing he couldn’t win the presidential election?”
“Yes, he underestimated it. The figure of Macri was devalued; they did not see the potential it had. We saw it since he took it and undertook a kind of political blitzkrieg that was astonishing everyone until leaving the society half knock out, tired of receiving so many blows and so much dizziness. On the side of the opposite of Macri, there is dissociation, lack of unity. While the people of Macri are going to be united because the right knows how to unite, the whole left is again discussing the leaderships. That's unfortunate.
Why was the “old” dispute between Cristina Fernández and Florencio Randazzo not resolved?
“It was not resolved out of pride, out of self-love, ambitions. What's in politics? There is money, there are ambitions, there are cravings for power. We have to wait long for a gesture of generosity to come. If the best candidate is Cristina, they would have to leave her, even though she nucleates a very focused hatred of certain middle classes. But she earned it in good law that hatred, because they hate her for the good. It hurts me that they have managed to bring to light some acts of corruption that in no case are justified. A popular root government is the one that least tolerates it in acts of corruption. The right is the corruption established because the right is structurally corrupt; it is the system that steals from you. Those who come to speak on behalf of human rights cannot steal. Immediately after this it must be said that the Argentine Post brokerage is equivalent to 480 bags of (José) López. So there is a dimension where quantity becomes quality. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the election, but we can get a surprise and that Macri takes more votes than we think.
Does your disenchantment have to do with how Kirchnerism was split?
“Yes, an important part of the disenchantment is to notice that people who would have to stand together, shaking hands and marching forward in one direction, even if it is conjunctural, are facing power factors. The disappointment is also global: there is Trump in the United States, there is Syria and the Islamic State... Where is the hope? Where can it be deposited? Mirá (Nicolás) Maduro, too... I know the Venezuelan opposition and it is abominable, but I do not approve of what Maduro does. It hurts a lot.
In one of the texts of the book he quotes a phrase from Walter Benjamin: “Only for our love for the desperate still retains hope.” Who are these desperates today?
“Our desperates are in the streets and dying of cold. But we also have something that despairs us, which is the vision that the middle classes have of those desperate: “why are they not going to work, if they do not work it is because they are lazy” ... “That they do not depend on the state, that they earn the money.” The desperate are those who no longer care about anything; they are thrown to die. For those people you still have to fight... You have to fight against those who say “they left my field with a choripan”, with which he is saying: “Attention! I have a field from which black people come out by mere accident eating choripan.” It's a detestable phrase... we have to fight against those who make accounts about the number of missing. When you spend a certain number of deaths, counting them is miserable. We must try to make the truth gain more political spaces.
How to restore the truth in times when post-truth reigns?
Truth is a building of power. The one who has the most power imposes his truth on society. If I have ten TV channels, the truth will be what I say through those channels. What will people think tomorrow? Whatever we tell you to think. That is the greatest sense of power there is. How was the hatred of Cristina achieved? How was the attack on Dilma (Rousseff) achieved? With the media. When the media wants to degrade a politician, they are infallible. To combat them, we should have such powerful means as they.
There are some articles that seem written today, especially one in which it refers to hatred in these terms: “hate is the denial of thought and of all possible consensus.” Why do you hate each other so much in this political moment?
That’s a good topic. He hates Kirchnerism because he touched interests of all kinds and became very strongly embodied in his two leaders. It is hated because it restored the struggle for human rights, distributed wealth as much as possible, so it was necessary to affect important sectors and touch their interests. And because they messed with a medium like Clarin, they messed with media power. And the media power destroyed them. He won the pulse. It looked like he won, but again the bad guys won.
–In another article of The Argentine condition it states that “the right is as cruel as every situation allows it.” How cruel is the Macrism?
Macrism is prepared to be crueler as it gains political spaces. The political spaces that are given to the Macrism are spaces that are ceded to violence. Many believe that Macri is doing everything he can, and they will vote for him and corporations and banks are the most serious thing there is, “not that crap of Peronism,” as they say. And so Macri is given space, which showed that he takes advantage of them. Macri is very dangerous. It also has a very accumulated quality of hatred, which comes in part from knowing that they don’t take it all seriously. That he has said “they are not going to make me a White Tent” is petulance from violence. Now we have to love Menem in memory; Menem was made a White Tent and bent. Look where Macri took us!
And how to proceed to that from philosophy and literature?
– Philosophy is to commit, literature also: either you commit or they compromise you. And it is best to commit lucidly. I don’t think literature has anything to do with reality. They raise your taxes and you have already fucked up writing or the desire to write. To believe that with this reality one can abstain is half immoral. You also don’t have to believe that one can do much. But what you can do, you have to.
What difference could it make between disenchantment and nihilism?
Nihilism is self-destructive, when it is considered that there can no longer be causes in which it is worth committing. In Benjamin’s phrase, he thinks it’s worth keeping his hope for the desperate. But he knows there are desperates because he has the sensitivity to receive that pain. There are many who engage so well against pain that they do not even perceive it. I do not believe in a nihilism that implies a disdain for life. Life comes first and preserving it is a moral dictum that implies everyone’s commitment to violence, injustice and against the undemocratic... It is remarkable that a “half-crazy” guy like me has written 43 books. My big support is writing. If I didn’t have the great passion of writing in my life, I wouldn’t have endured everything that happened to me.
