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May 11, 2012

Power of words to justify wars

Noah Richler is among the authors reading in Incite@VPL series.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY

Incite@VPL is a twice-monthly reading series that was started by the Vancouver International Writers Festival and Vancouver Public Library to offer “illuminating readings and discussions with novelists, poets and non-fiction writers.” The first year of the series was impressive, with authors including Daniel Kalla, Alexander MacLeod, Joyce Carol Oates and Bernhard Schlink, to touch but the surface. The second year has been of equally high calibre to date and the list of upcoming speakers is reason for further excitement.

Next Tuesday, on May 15, former CBC executive Richard Stursberg will discuss his new memoir, Tower of Babble: Sins, Secrets and Successes Inside the CBC (Douglas and McIntyre, 2012). On Wednesday, May 23, Trevor and Debbie Greene will read from March Forth (HarperCollins Canada, 2012), about journalist and Canadian Army reservist Trevor Greene’s recovery from an axe attack he survived in 2006 while deployed in Kandahar, and Noah Richler will read from his most recent work, What We Talk About When We Talk About War (Goose Lane Editions, 2012).

The Incite series facilitates “the exploration of books and ideas”; its speakers open avenues to various insights via literature, but they also attempt to incite, in the best meaning possible of that word: in this scenario, to provoke active thinking and healthy debate. As but one example, the Jewish Independent interviewed Richler about his new book, which most readers will find thought-provoking, even if they are not completely convinced by his arguments.

Looking back at an interview the Independent did with Richler when his first book was published, This is My Country, What’s Yours? A Literary Atlas of Canada (McClelland and Stewart, 2006), it shouldn’t have been a surprise that his What We Talk About When We Talk About War is strongly opinionated. In his first book, among many other discussions, Richler argues that reading a novel is a political act and that the “task of stories is one of arguing versions of the society in question.”

“We can see a battle of stories being played out in the current strife in the Middle East,” writes Richler in This is My Country, “where the narrative culture of the novel is embroiled with that of the epic. It is a conflict that has been reiterated at home and is being used to challenge the Canadian multiculturalist ethic. The reigning forms of story of the Islamist cultures with which the novel-reading countries of the West must contend are votive religious texts advocating tales of unadulterated heroism (martyrs) and outright villainy (the United States of America as the ‘Mother of All Evil,’ the ‘Great Satan,’ etc.).”

He continues: “Concerning terrorism, the debate about ‘root causes’ is essentially one between the novel’s liberal democratic view (if we are fundamentally alike, then what is it that made you the way you are?) and an epic view that allows for the existence of an enemy, pure and simple. The rhetoric and storytelling that President George Bush Jr.’s government has used, as well as ... now the Canadian government that supports him, is an instance of epic thinking being rallied against epic thinking.”

What We Talk About When We Talk About War expands on this idea, examining how, since 9/11, there has been an active effort on the part of the Conservatives and others to replace Canada’s peace-oriented mythology with that of a “warrior nation.” While Richler’s analysis covers much historical ground, it is based on the more recent time period:

“This book is a consideration of the phrases and forms of story that Canada has used in order to talk itself into, through and out of the war in Afghanistan,” writes Richler in the introduction to What We Talk About. “The Canadian commitment to the war required a full-scale eradication of the country’s foundation myths as they had been told for half a century. The face that Canada now presents to the world has been profoundly transformed. Much of the change was managed at a banal, mundane level of stories and clichés that were nevertheless so powerful that a previously peaceful society, one in which a respect for the individual distinction of views was paramount, quickly conceded the ground to a more monolithic one fervently embarking on the most destructive of paths and calling such a route ‘heroic.’

“And yet, as the Ghanaian is fond of saying, ‘No condition is permanent.’ Understanding the dizzying conflict of narratives that has arisen out of Canada’s participation in the war in Afghanistan throws a bright light on how we, as a society, convince ourselves that a fight is right, and compels us to ask of ourselves what part the country should properly play in conflicts not yet started.”

It is with an eye to the future that Richler has written his latest book, which includes a detailed section offering prescriptive measures, but its genesis lies in the presentation he gave at the Université de Moncton’s 2010 Northrop Frye-Antonine Maillet Lecture.

In an interview with the Independent, he explained, “Rather than speak about previous work, I thought I’d try giving some of its ideas about story a direct, political application to a political development in the country that worried me a lot – namely, the turning away from Canada’s Pearsonian legacy towards a simpler, more jingoistic and ultimately fallacious idea of its ‘warrior nation’ identity. The lecture was a first foray, and it is to the credit of my publishers, Goose Lane Editions, that they dealt so equitably with the 105,000 and not 8,000 words they would routinely have expected in their issue of the lecture series.”

While Richler admits in his acknowledgements that the process from lecture to book was not straightforward, he took umbrage with the notion that it was unclear what the book was trying to be: an objective analysis based on literature or history or a subjective commentary on politics or the media’s role in creating/promoting propaganda.

“This is absolutely not true, and I dare say reflects an orthodoxy in your reading rather than a lack of focus in the book,” he told the Independent. “Simply put, I do not believe the study of literature and that of war to be distinct realms. I state in the introduction that I am interested in the terms, phrases and narratives that make certain political outcomes possible, and that I am applying a theory of narrative to the specific example of Canada’s participation in NATO’s war in Afghanistan.... I also have no problem with the structure: an introduction, a look at a specific myth (Vimy) as a way into three chapters that reflect the perennial movement of a society committing to a war, staying on, and then getting out of it and, because I do not believe in restricting myself to a culture of complaint, a set of institutional proposals that reflect the political and historical points and others about Canadian identity that I have been making.

“In an ideal world, though I wonder even about that, I would have been able to write a book that looked at Canada’s century of wars, from South Africa to Afghanistan, in more detail, but that would have taken years and I have a family to feed. It was also ... important for GLE and me to publish the book this year. It is a polemic. Our government has had a free ride, any Ottawa opposition having been nonexistent for several years. My Canada is one that thrives on decent argument. I was chipping in.”

At 376 pages, Richler chips in soundly with What We Talk About When We Talk About War, not only going back to Greek mythology to support his narrative analysis but also proposing what he would like to see in the future. He also looks at the effects of war both abroad, where the fighting is taking place for Canadians, and at home, though not always with enough evidence to support his theories to the Independent’s liking.

To this assertion, Richler countered, “I make it perfectly clear that the effect of the war and of the relapse of the nation into a high militaristic mode had many effects – at the level of the state finding it more easy to demonize its enemies at home as well as abroad (activists at G20, immigrants as ‘terrorists’ jumping the queue or, this year, environmentalists) but also at a ludicrously silly personal level, in the acclamation of hockey players as ‘heroes’ or in the desire of postal workers to carry a Taser. I am making the connection. That is your evidence. That is what social critics do.”

Richler disagreed with the suggestion that the book was perhaps published too soon, given that the Conservatives who attempted to recast Canada as a “warrior nation” are still in power and that they and other supporters of the military action there have apparently shifted their talking points to a narrative more in keeping with Canada’s peace-oriented mythology. Writes Richler in What We Talk About, “By this time [approximately 2010], the conflict in Afghanistan was hardly ever referred to as a ‘war.’ It had become a ‘mission,’ a change in the lexicon that enhanced the possibility of a dignified withdrawal of Canadian Forces from an Afghanistan war that was far from won.”

About the publication of the book, which contains references from as recently as a few months ago, Richler said, “It may be ‘too soon’ for humor, as I myself argue is possible, but it certainly is not ‘too soon’ for discussion and a look at the changes that have been deliberately put forward by government, the media and a coterie of academics (not necessarily acting as a cabal) and the way in which they have trammeled previously extant myths and narratives about the nation to do so. Such phenomena neither started nor ended in Afghanistan, as this year’s exploitation of the history of the War of 1812 also shows: the government, through the Department of Heritage, is scrambling to commemorate anything to do with a war that was not even fought by Canada – this effort at elevation of a history that is not technically ours is almost farcical at times. You could publish a War of 1812 Party Games book and get money for it, these days. At the same time, it is important to respect the brilliance of such a move to the national narrative the nation is trying to promote: where we used to believe, in my novelist father Mordecai’s oft-quoted words, that Canada was but ‘a holding tank of disgruntled peoples’ of losing United Empire Loyalists and assorted cowards, now we are able to believe that since before the country’s inception we have been brave fighting men. It doesn’t even bear consideration what we might have been fighting for, or that the militarist promoters of this story, despite their contemporary monarchist zeal, would likely have wanted to fight for the Republican side. History exploited becomes a farce, and it is certainly not too soon for me to say so.”

As for the future, Richler’s recommendations are threefold: the creation of a regiment under the aegis of the Department of National Defence that is dedicated to peace operations, the establishment of a “college in which at least a minor degree in some aspect of peace operations was a necessary condition to graduate” and a national community (volunteer) corps that would complement the new regiment’s activities. As to what would keep all of these institutions safe from political influence, Richler said, “Well, despite my opposition to the Conservative abuse of Canadian consensus ... I also am confident in our general ability to found institutions and respect what they are there for.”

He explained that the point of his schema “is to enshrine in institutions the very important notion that conflict resolution, just as is true of so-called ‘war-fighting,’ is an evolving science and we need to study and promote it that way. In this future, I imagine Canada having its own regiment, not as a force operating alone – its creation would be a challenge to other states to do a similar thing and create a sizeable force – but certainly a unit with integrity and its own accumulated learning allowing the government to decide with better information about whether or not it would be ‘just’ and, as importantly, practical for Canada to embark on the sort of humanitarian intervention for which there is plenty of demand though little favor at the moment.

“We are living ... in an insular time, not just in Canada but in the wider, bruised world. This will not always be the case and Canada can provide the lead. The other point of such a regiment is that it would be more clear what the DND’s conventional troops and the peace operations regiment are to be committed to. Sudan or the Ivory Coast or even Syria are not wars of national defence. Having the two forces is not a barrier against deceit but it does make it harder for a government to lie.”

Richler concluded his interview with the Independent by stressing that he is not “upholding ‘peacekeeping’ ... when I go to such pains to describe the traps of language....  I am arguing for ‘peace operations’ and conflict resolution instead, a tendency I believe and show to have arisen from the particular historical and topographical circumstances of Canada’s nature – of Canadians at their best, aware of their inexplicable fortune and the responsibility to share it, a tendency that functions in concert along with the sometimes-comic realization of the absurdity of living in this land at all. Canadians think about what it means to be the other innately, and this is not the impulse to ‘epic thinking’ that governments, this one in particular, need to rely on to promote demagogic sports-team ideas of nationhood.”

Noah Richler is at the Incite Reading Series on May 23, 7:30 p.m., in the Alice MacKay Room, at the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library. Admission is free, on a first-come-first-served basis, and books will be available for purchase. Attendees are asked to register in advance to incitevpl2012.eventbrite.com.

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