Cross CurrentsPub Date : 2019-10-17DOI: 10.1111/cros.12379
Iris Hermann
{"title":"Shit Bucket Campaigns and Nestbeschmutzer","authors":"Iris Hermann","doi":"10.1111/cros.12379","DOIUrl":"10.1111/cros.12379","url":null,"abstract":"<p>On June 8, 1986, in the second round of elections, Kurt Waldheim was elected President of Austria. Up to that point, he could look back on a great diplomatic career: For ten years, he had held the important office of General Secretary of the United Nations and he had previously served as Foreign Minister of Austria. But after his election, nothing in Austria remained the same. His election, his person, and his conduct caused a political firestorm that changed the foundations of the Republic of Austria. The point was less the public exposure of a Nazi perpetrator than how the nation chose to remember Nazi crimes, and the kinds of obligations and responsibilities that arose from these crimes for individuals.</p><p>Waldheim was not accused of being a war criminal. Even the World Jewish Congress, which performed a thorough investigation and would not have hesitated to charge him, did not accuse him of specific crimes; he was never indicted or convicted of concrete wrongdoing. What aroused animosity was the way in which he “doctored” his career, hid his actual whereabouts during the last years of the war, and lied about his proximity to the executed war criminal General Löhr in Yugoslavia. He must have had knowledge of mass murders, even if he did not personally participate. Instead, he claimed lapses in memory, denied his membership in the Storm Troopers, and spun ever more fantastic tales, which failed to explain anything. Doron Rabinovici, a writer, historian, and member of the Republican Club, which was founded during the Waldheim Affair as the public voice of the opposition, said this about Kurt Waldheim: “How he had dealt with his past between 1945 until then was pathetic and unacceptable. He embodied everything we fought against. Waldheim's lies were important not because they were personal character flaws, but because they revealed the broader political strategy. We knew our Waldheimers. They relied on antisemitism as a dog whistle. Fiery yellow placards went up all over Vienna announcing in blazing red script: ‘We Austrians will elect the man <i><b>we</b></i> want’. Such slogans targeted Jews, although it was by no means only Jewish officials who wondered how it was possible that an intelligence officer serving in the Saloniki region could claim ignorance about the deportations leaving Greece.”1</p><p>I have chosen this affair for this essay on “impurity and guilt” because both sides, Waldheim opponents and Waldheim supporters, confronted each in the semantic field of filth (German: <i>Dreck,</i> which is closely associated with “shit”) deploying this terminology in ever more creative ways to attack opponents. I will use two examples from different media: first, Robert Schindel's grand Viennese novel, <i>Der Kalte,</i> which is often read as an account of the Waldheim Affair.2 There is the figure of Johann Wais, who shares many features with Waldheim. And there is an abundance of references to filth, particularly in their Viennese manifest","PeriodicalId":42142,"journal":{"name":"Cross Currents","volume":"69 3","pages":"291-300"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/cros.12379","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124171990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cross CurrentsPub Date : 2019-10-17DOI: 10.1111/cros.12377
Deborah Williger
{"title":"Purity and Kashrut","authors":"Deborah Williger","doi":"10.1111/cros.12377","DOIUrl":"10.1111/cros.12377","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The dialectic of impurity is expressed by the old German proverb <i>Dreck macht Speck</i>, meaning “filth makes bacon.” This sounds like a non-kosher introduction to the topic at hand, but the proverb articulates that children, like piglets, will put on weight once they ingest a certain amount of filth from their environment. This absorption increases the variety of intestinal germ population, which has been demonstrated to promote robust growth. On the other hand, there is the saying <i>Vor dem Essen, Händewaschen nicht vergessen</i>, warning “don't forget to wash your hands before you eat.” This claims the opposite: Certain impurities cause dangerous illnesses. Therefore, it is necessary to cleanse dirt that could be harmful and pose a risk to health and life. Infiltration by impurities must be prevented before they do damage. Both physical and psychological contaminations can affect individuals or groups. Spiritual contaminations that dominate one's entire existence fall, following traditional Jewish interpretations, into the category of idolatry. Worshiping foreign gods is a capital crime. The transgression of the commandment against making images, represented in the Hebrew Bible as the dance around the golden calf, is considered unthinkable.</p><p>Measuring degrees of spiritual pollution seems impossible. By contrast, the natural sciences have no problem quantifying the exact doses and potential costs and benefits of pollution in a variety of environments. Once a critical mass of impurity enters a living organism, it can do harm. If the infected organic mass cannot be healed, it dies. The creatures’ organic mass disintegrates into its molecular units, and its bare skeletal remains emerge clean and purified. In the end, death makes a clean separation between organic and inorganic matter, while life presupposes the commingling of both unconditionally. Living organisms are characterized by diversity and movement. Organic and inorganic elements exchange, mix, mingle, and separate in rhythmic cycles. There is constant metabolic exchange between chemical elements, such as nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon; mineral building blocks, such as phosphorus, calcium, or iron; and various organic components, such as carbohydrates, enzymes, hormones, and amino acids in tissues, vessels, organs, and cellular nuclei. Living organisms, whether single or composite cell organisms, constantly establish a fluid equilibrium between internal and external elements. Life flourishes where separation and recombination, division, and fertilization occur. Once certain parts no longer come together in order to multiply, distances widen and borders emerge that eventually lead to permanent divisions, and life ends.</p><p>It seems high time to develop new methods for cleansing and healing. Despite considerable scientific progress in the development of tools and technologies, all the way to computers and artificial intelligence, humanity has not succeeded in creating a more just","PeriodicalId":42142,"journal":{"name":"Cross Currents","volume":"69 3","pages":"264-276"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/cros.12377","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131826488","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cross CurrentsPub Date : 2019-10-17DOI: 10.1111/cros.12380
Nelly van Doorn-Harder
{"title":"Purifying Indonesia, Purifying Women: The National Commission for Women's Rights and the 1965–1968 anti-Communist violence","authors":"Nelly van Doorn-Harder","doi":"10.1111/cros.12380","DOIUrl":"10.1111/cros.12380","url":null,"abstract":"<p>On May 29, 2006, Komnas Perempuan, the Indonesian National Commission that advocates for the rights of women, met with a delegation of nineteen women survivors of the 1965–1966 anti-Communist violence to consider their official complaint. The moment was historic: these women officially broke their silence of forty years. Between 1965 and 1968, they had been the victims of horrible acts of violence committed by other Indonesians, their neighbors, colleagues, and even friends. Participating in para-military and vigilante groups, the perpetrators had murdered between half and one million Indonesians and incarcerated more than one million. Accused of harboring Communist sympathies or being active members of the party, many of these women spent decades in jail. For forty years, the Suharto government had forbidden any mention of their plight. Their local communities, at times even their own families, had ostracized them. They had been demonized based on their direct, indirect, or alleged involvement in the Indonesian Communist Party (Partei Kommunis Indonesia or PKI). The rationale for the massacres, incarceration, and silence was that Communists polluted Indonesian society and made the country impure. By virtue of their gender, women were especially susceptible to allegations of impurity, which gave their adversaries permission to rape and sexually abuse them.</p><p>Komnas Perempuan is an abbreviation that stands for Komisi Nasional Anti Kekerasan terhadap Perempuan (The National Commission against Violence against Women).1 A government-sponsored organization, it was set up on October 15, 1998, after the collapse of the oppressive Suharto regime (1966–1998). When in the spring of 1998, during the transition period from dictatorship to democracy, large-scale communal riots erupted, many women were sexually assaulted.2 This was not the first time such patterns of violence and sexual assault had occurred. It had been an open secret that during military operations the regime's security forces violated human rights on a staggering scale. Military personnel targeted women in places the government considered rebellious, such as Aceh, Papua, and Timor Lorosae. All through the 1990s, civil society groups insisted that the state start to accept responsibility for this particular form of gendered violence. The press and many average Indonesians observing the 1998 violence noticed that there was an eerie resemblance between what was happening at the time and previous attacks on women during the 1965–1966 events. As a result, women activists lobbied for the creation of an organization that would focus on basic human rights of women alongside the Indonesian Commission for Human Rights that is called KOMNAS HAM (Komisi Nasional Hak Asasi Manusia).</p><p>In this article, I focus on some of the strategies developed by Komnas Perempuan to address the plight of the 1965–1966 victims. By 2005, many of the women survivors were elderly and had lived most of their lives","PeriodicalId":42142,"journal":{"name":"Cross Currents","volume":"69 3","pages":"301-318"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/cros.12380","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130717889","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cross CurrentsPub Date : 2019-10-17DOI: 10.1111/cros.12385
Peter Heinegg
{"title":"Faces of Muhammad: Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today. By John V. Tolan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. xii + 309 pp. $29.95.","authors":"Peter Heinegg","doi":"10.1111/cros.12385","DOIUrl":"10.1111/cros.12385","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42142,"journal":{"name":"Cross Currents","volume":"69 3","pages":"337-340"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/cros.12385","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127318514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cross CurrentsPub Date : 2019-10-17DOI: 10.1111/cros.12375
Katharina von Kellenbach
{"title":"Guilt and Its Purification","authors":"Katharina von Kellenbach","doi":"10.1111/cros.12375","DOIUrl":"10.1111/cros.12375","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Amidst the horror of ongoing revelations about the Roman Catholic Church's complicity in sexual predation, a theological reflection on Christian teachings about guilt and reconciliation is enlightening. Flawed notions of Christian forgiveness have brought us to this point where priests are absolved of crimes by their colleagues and reassigned to different posts in blind faith in their resolve to begin anew. The mystery of redemption is at the heart of the Christian message, which makes this systemic failure sadly predictable and particularly painful. What is wrong with the Christian theory and practice of sin and forgiveness that it fails to resist devastating complicity? Shifting focus from redemption to guilt invites reflection on the problematic metaphors that facilitate quick release and premature closure. The language of guilt invokes the imagery of stains and impurities that must be purified (by the sacrificial blood of Christ) or of burdens and weights that can be lifted and carried away (by a substitutionary scapegoat). In either case, guilt disappears as if by magic. This essay questions this imagery and draws on ecologically informed, sustainable practices of purification in order to propose a sequence of ritual steps to transform personal and collective guilt in the wake of the sexual abuse crisis.</p><p>We rarely stop to define guilt, because it is immediately linked to forgiveness. Guilt and forgiveness, sin and redemption are paired concepts that are mentioned in the same breath. But what is guilt? Is it an individual feeling or an objective condition? The term is often used interchangeably, although the emotion and the state of being guilty are, unfortunately, very different experiences. In fact, it is one of the cruel ironies that victims <i>feel</i> guilty, while perpetrators remain indifferent to and oblivious about the harm they caused. It is the victims who are wracked by guilt feelings, sometimes severely so. Depression, anxiety, trouble sleeping, and nightmares are common experiences among survivors. The symptom of survivor guilt would eventually be incorporated into the emerging concept of “trauma” and its official clinical diagnosis as PTSD, post-traumatic stress syndrome.1 Among its four symptoms, listed by National Institute of Health, are “distorted feelings like guilt or blame” and “negative thoughts about oneself or the world.”2 Much of the psychoanalytic discourse on guilt is victim-centered since research is driven by patients who consult psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.3 And it is the victims of traumatic violence who are plagued by intense emotions of guilt, rage, shame, and powerlessness. Perpetrators rarely consult therapists, counselors, or confessors. As long as perpetrators do not present with symptoms or are required by law to sign up for therapy [as pedophiles and sex offenders must do according to German law],4 there are few empirical studies on the symptomology of a “perpetrator syndrome.” The diag","PeriodicalId":42142,"journal":{"name":"Cross Currents","volume":"69 3","pages":"238-251"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/cros.12375","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133313707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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