Opinion
On
knowledge, criticism, and design.
By:
Alfredo Guevara
e-mail:
digital@jrebelde.cip.cu
February 4, 2009 - 00:09:12 GMT
I.- On knowledge and the road to
freedom
It was at the Moncada garrison, amid all the pain, hope and
bloodshed, where the «cultural policy» of a Revolution inspired by Martí
and headed by Fidel became sacred at last. Launched right after V-day,
the plan was to step up our people’s general education and foster unity
–as well as the exchange of vital experiences– between city workers and
peasants, first through a heroic literacy campaign that strengthened
their practical and moral bonds and then with the race for ninth grade,
in a relentless and progressive search for knowledge. The exercise of
freedom would be nothing but make-believe without all the lessons we
received then, day after day and hour after hour, from teachers eager to
share with us their endless wealth of knowledge. It was the beginning of
a cultural program that bore the most wonderful fruit: a country of over
12 million citizens who have gone way beyond elementary school and of
whom a whole million have a university degree and other hundreds of
thousands are on the way to get one.
Such has been and still is, I repeat, the Revolution’s cultural policy.
We must move on then, and develop our potential to aim for more
elaborate cultural levels and goals yet to be reached. In other words,
make a beeline for our purest, truest and most fundamental and, I dare
say, basic aspiration of a Martí-based Revolution by impregnating with
knowledge the very nature of society and its citizenry.
That is why I stated at the VII Congress of our National Union of
Writers and Artists (UNEAC) that we had better remember and honor Marx’s
assertion that «...for thousands of years culture and society have been,
strictly speaking, two looks upon a single subject of reflection. Known
since the dawn of man, society is the one that assumes associations and
common values found in past memories, which are our history; while
history is what we take from our experiences, which progressively purify
our knowledge. This is culture, an underlying, ever-present design that
determines our society, its features and mechanisms, whether visible or
invisible, sophisticated or primary; in other words, its potential».
As I see it, the jump from being ignorant to becoming learned is
paramount if you want to exercise freedom. Therefore, I refer over and
over again to what it means to have a million university graduates and
many more ready to be citizens.
It is not by chance that I use the word «person», for the person, as an
autonomous being, is what matters. Such accomplishment is a symbol of
the Revolution, and what makes me radically different from everything
that is accidental, small or big, serious or unimportant in every
personal or historic process. To understand our society you must stop to
cherish its essence and erect something on top. Only then will you be
able to learn its history, find out what lies within and discern its
bright and dark spots, traps and lessons in order to make your choice,
and forever retain what it is putting across to the future, that is, its
brightest and diaphanous values. Only like this can we approach the
postulate demanded by the question of what it is like for a citizen to
be revolutionary: to be always in the vanguard, found it if need be,
play a leading role in it and make it ethically and aesthetically
richer.
What I know for sure is that our intelligence, knowledge and method are
critical sources of lucidity and we will have to find the necessary
solutions, however unprecedented, for every epoch and situation. I also
know that there will be no future without everybody’s active and
creative participation, or if the written word fails to become the
eternal action we know as life.
To quote Karl Marx again, «we must know reality before we can change
it».
II.- On criticism as an approach to the truth in history
Words, that marvelous refuge of concepts, are usually accurate,
albeit constantly changing and taking endless nuances, depending on
their meaning and the degree to which they are misused, overused and
even purposely distorted or made monotonous. I’d like to dwell on the
word «criticism» and the meaning I lend to it for my own purposes.
By criticism I mean analysis and search for information, the use of
whatever experience we have gained through reflection to grasp our real
history in its true context. Simply said, the use of every available
instrument we can get to understand a situation, epoch, period or group
of actions better and in more detail. I think about José Martí, [Alejo]
Carpentier, Cintio Vitier, Valery, Caillois (whom Alejo made me
appreciate), Pasolini and Víctor Sklovski, but in order to voice my own
disquieting worries –as I cannot stand voluntary blindness– I think most
of all about Karl Marx.
Those who read his work sincerely, without trying to work things to
their own advantage, will find that he left not a single word to chance,
that his writings were always preceded by hard study, facts,
verification, the exchange of views with other people and comparisons
with other texts and sources, as he was a first-class encyclopedist and
an ever-learning wise man. This allowed him to fathom not only the
origins and progress of capital and its real behavior in history,
something he managed to figure out and foresee, but also the way
merchandise becomes an idol and the market a trap deprived of any ethics
or purpose slightly
related to the betterment of man and society.
None of Marx’s texts, reflections, articles or letters, no matter how
complex their subject, lacks the backing of thorough studies or his
omnipresent ethical inspiration. Noticeable therein is his well-founded,
irrefutable, compelling intellectual and practical struggle for people’s
liberation, humanization and the right to develop all their potential,
long choked by the exploitation, either open or disguised, of their
productive and, one way or another, creative energies. To me, Karl Marx
is above all else the foremost and most integral thinker who fought for
people’s true liberty, dignity and independence. To be so he must have
been, and I’m sure he was, not only a brilliant intellectual, but also a
tireless student.
Similar devotion to thinking, studying and researching with a
view to verifying and supporting everything, is or should be at the root
of our critical awareness and the moral and social responsibility that
evaluating a given epoch, situation or period entails. I will never let
myself get carried away by routines or impositions that sometimes
surpass what is otherwise fair. Sometimes what is fair (say, an
apology), should by no means lead to what is unfair or, for that matter,
to uncritical generalizations. Those usually stem from disregard for or
insensitivity to another word-concept, the nuance, which is at times too
subtle to be easily perceived. However, it cannot go unheeded when we
exercise criticism of our own free will, lest we end up confused and
inefficient.
III.- On design as an instrument to express intellectual and ethical
dedication
If we start from the two-fold
premise that, on one hand, you can tell a society by its culture and see
it as an outcome of the historical and cultural process along which it
formed and took shape, and –of course– find in culture the mark left by
the entire human activity of yesterday, today and tomorrow, and on the
other, that a short period of time cannot be relied to provide the right
idea about consequential events or major projects, then we must expect
that if one or more policies laid down by a party, social organization,
guild or institution or even by a renowned, influential individual are a
part or even an essential element in society’s development either in one
second or after a long time, we will see that those are not the only
elements and also that the interference of many other factors cannot be
avoided, including pure chance with its unpredictable social,
climatological and other surprises.
It is like the three hurricanes that succeeded each other and
destroyed priceless assets in several provinces, robbed us of our time
and energy, and shattered some hopes that it seemed we would have soon
been able to bring to fulfillment.
Can a society, its government or the leaders of one of its
sectors, services, schools or economic branches in charge of providing
to its citizens afford to take a decision in a
trice about the
intellectual-practical process we know as design, relying solely on its
talent and experience and without jeopardizing its mission, detracting
from its responsibility or taking a minute to organize things if it were
deemed necessary or convenient?
It is the ruler and decision-maker, a full-fledged, if fragile, man, who
faces the greatest risk, as he must decide on behalf of others –alone or
as part of a team– the fate of all members of society, which is in turn
that of every one of them and, sometimes, that of just one individual
who is isolated and different but, in the final analysis, no less a
person.
How to approach, then, the topic I suggest herein without getting
lost in doctrinal twists and turns or the twisting alleys of
interpretation? Thus I get at what I care for the most: to define, once
the use –as opposed to the abuse– of the term «criticism» is specified,
the values of another, no less underestimated and impoverished term, one
we should take into account and use to a greater extent, used for many
things and mainly in plastic arts, but one which I will apply in its
broadest sense: design.
Speaking on the basis of one’s personal professional experience, who in
their right mind would think of starting to invest in and make a film
and consider it done without a feasibility study about its cost in terms
of deadlines, casting, qualified technicians who can work together,
settings, supplies, catering, transportation, etc., or without weather
reports and a forecast of nature’s possible effects on the process? What
filmmaker would come up with an inflexible timetable with no regard to
eventualities or without the skilled staff capable of modifying any
lines that an actor might find unpronounceable or a dialogue that proves
laughable or inadequate when it comes to the crunch? Every detail must
be foreseen, calculated and carefully weighed up long before take one,
and to that effect something is accounted for in the plan, known in
other fields as road map, which schedules with great precision the most
expensive and difficult-to-reconcile elements.
As a working method, design is as common in cinema as it is
indispensable, a kind of art that demands no chronological order from
the shooting and production process. Yet, as an organizational principle
and a benchmark of both the feasibility of and the preparations for
filmmaking, it is quite valuable in all respects. It is from this
standpoint that we believe no such basic ignorance must exist in any
field. However, for the sake of caution, we will confine our views to
artistic, literary and, in general, humanistic expressions, for
instance, the schools, and especially the universities, including the
Higher School of Arts. The reason is that the most thorough, rigorous
design would have to come before any work program, policy guideline or
change thereof. Lack of foresight, breakneck decision-making,
indulgence, personal inspiration, even judgments reached without a
confrontational dialogue. They must all be banished from such a
sensitive field where the knowledge and discernment typical of the great
teaching profession would also have to play a key role and rely on
scholars from other disciplines.
Therefore, I wonder –permanently obsessed with the idea of a design that
comes before any action, the moment when the wheel meets the road and
the first step is taken toward the realm of what will be– whether it is
advisable and feasible to train decision-makers from every level of
management in these principles.
I have never done any course in a military school, but I am sure that
design stands as a basic principle in their curriculum. I have addressed
this topic here on the basis of cinematic experience and Bauhaus
teachings. A design is not a guarantee of success, nor does it bring
magical results, but it sure helps to avoid absurd failures. Our
managers attend courses on military readiness at regular intervals,
their drills almost certainly conducted by army officers. Wouldn’t it be
convenient to train them as well in the use of a preparatory, preventive
exercise like «design», or whatever they call it in military science,
that provides so many options and guarantees? It would be a further
contribution to our defense, in this case from nonsense.
IV.- Declaration
This is my reflection about an issue that always preys my mind
and one that, in my opinion, we never address as much as we should in
our assessments and debates. As a socialist revolutionary and someone
who dreams about utopia, I feel co-responsible for the Revolution in its
entirety and perceive my country as a huge crystal-clear lake covering
111,000 square kilometers. It's a vast sea teeming with unthinkable
currents of turbulent waters and strong, uncontrollable waves, but
always dominated by a central, never-shifting stream of pristine
transparency.
That is the current that leads me to commit myself to these sunsets from
which hope is born out of the horizon like a many-colored burst that
brings a whole different day every morning. That is the current that
makes me, first and foremost, set my sights on and fight for the future.
http://www.juventudrebelde.cu/opinion/2009-02-04/del-saber-la-critica-y-el-diseno/
http://www.juventudrebelde.cu/UserFiles/File/impreso/icuba-2009-02-04.pdf
