With a hat tip to er, I was then informed by the UK Guardian (turn to the Left and bow deeply) that bullfighting has been banned in Catalonia and the last fight just took place in Barcelona. The situation is not quite a simple one because the Catalans, who speak their own Romance but not-Spanish language*, have long been restive and even violent in pursuit of their national autonomy. I spent Christmas Eve in Barcelona in 1973. I remember the bilingual Mass at the Cathedral, Spanish and Catalan, as well as the people in front of the building at night, doing their courtly national dance, the Jota.
Nevertheless, I take two things from this story. One, which er pointed out, is the use to which closed bullrings are put. One has already turned into a shopping mall. This one has several proposals on the table: "an indoor market, a block of luxury apartments and a mosque financed by Dubai." What does it say about a civilization when a scene of ritualized conflict between man and beast becomes a market, houses for the rich, or another fortress for the Mohammedans to undo the Reconquista? Where is Santiago Matamoros when you need him?
And although bullfighting is a particularly Spanish taste, it is part of the repertoire of strong masculine symbols in Western culture which are now under attack and fading away. Whether it be the phallus of the lion rampant on a military shield, foxhunting in England, the very idea of carrying and using a gun, corporal punishment or the death penalty...everywhere the drift of liberal society, in the name of "civilization" is against masculine self-confidence and energy, in favor of a feminized pacifist vegetarian world full of neutered puppies consuming only sustainable green products from Fair Trade non-profits.
The only trouble is that the rest of the world is not like that. I recall a mid 60's movie about Genghis Khan** where the young Temujin finds himself at the court of the super-civilized Chinese emperor, who is overweight and cares only for poetry and court etiquette; very sophisticated and urbane, he sees the future Khan merely as an intemperate barbarian. Which he was. Utterly lacking in self-doubt. Full of Lord Clark's self-confidence and energy. Temujin learned what he needed to, both about Chinese military strategy and Chinese corruption. Later in the film, of course, the old emperor and his exquisite taste gets obliterated. Omar Sharif vs Robert Morley. Guess who's gonna win?
And as shit-disturber Jack Donovan has pointed out in Androphilia, "A society dominated by women and effeminates cannot survive."
*If you know Spanish, you can sorta read Catalan (I had to use a Catalan article for an esoteric paper I once wrote about the history of Vespers!) but when spoken, it's as different from Spanish as Italian or Portuguese.
**It's a good flick, but no comparison with the epochal The Conqueror, with John Wayne as Genghis and Susan Hayward as Bortai.
1 comment:
»in favor of a feminized pacifist vegetarian world full of neutered puppies consuming only sustainable green products from Fair Trade non-profits. The only trouble is that the rest of the world is not like that.«
Voilà, then, the absolute powerlessness of the West? The nihilism Hegel reveal'd would be properly resolved into feminist pacifist vegeterianism etc if only it were a universal resolution enthused for "everywhere, always and by all," but the trouble is Muslims, Chinese hegemonists et al won't go along with it?
I'm not so pessimistic(?). The Western lands still have violence percolating aplenty -- subterranean quasi-racist anti-semitism in Europe, armaments manufactures and exports even in the most pacifist feminist countries (e.g. Sweden, where the phallus on a lion rampant must be excised or hidden). But a LGBT lion/ess rampant might do -- mane of the lion, but hidden sexual part of the lioness? For Sweden has a vibrant armaments industry.) The British Suffragettes understood that they had to support conscription (in late WW1!) in order to join democratic civilization with voting rights and all.
Admittedly, violence isn't manliness or masculinity. And ex cathedra is referring only to the regnant idealism(?), where noble manliness etc has no place. ... Yet if noble manliness were to return to honour, the return cannot be arranged by powers that *simply* wish to use or exploit it. They would have to permit some honour for noble manliness in the seculum. ... Similarly, fathers won't return to family life -- and mothers won't want them to -- if fathers are simply necessary to keep kids off drugs and in school, etc.
Accordingly, the West's need to import manliness in neo-Islam? But as Nietzsche said, Islam (doesn't raise up but) depends upon manhood. Neo-Islam may be a different thing, but historically we see that Islam corrupts men and manliness -- which they brought in from the barbarian tribes.
Has neo-Islam found a way to prevent this corruption into "effeminacy" or softness? For the decadent Islam of the Islamic lands heritage has not been the source of the spirited jihadis. More like these new Muslims of a new Islam were raised up as a kind of Western alterity or whatnot. ... Perhaps Traditionalists have learnt from Christendom after all: The pressure of necessity imposed by invading Islam compel'd the Christian ladies to raise up legitimate kings and thus the Holy Roman Empire -- which rose up *on a sudden* Hobbes says *from the ruins of the old*. Romulus started from zilch, Machiavelli emphasized -- rejected by the white, exposed at birth, etc (Prince 6).
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