THE LITERARY IMPACT
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OF THE AMERICAN AND FlliNCH IliVOLUTIONS
who have lived for a while in the West, in the sense that exiles have a
different perspective. Is there any chance of their gaining and being given
the status of social and moral critics in Eastern Europe as well?
Vassily Aksyonov:
Yes. I believe that Communism was just one phase
of many phases of totalitarianism which are still unknown to us, maybe
waiting for us around the corner so that when Communism was de–
feated, there is yet another enemy to face. This is why I believe that it is
really ridiculous to talk now about intellectuals being obsolete - right
after their historically unique great triumph, in which intellectuals made
the greatest contribution to the crush of one of the well-known totali–
tarian systems in the world. There might have been a chance that they
could have become obsolete, if they had indeed woken up one morning
and not found any enemy around. And what would the world be with–
out an enemy? So boring!
Thus, history has provided another enemy, many of them, right away.
All kinds of populist, nationalist, fascist strains, and even some totalitarian
trends really do exist in prosperolls countries, free countries in the West.
We see a lot of totalitarianism, in the form of really threatening
tendencies, in our society in the West. I say "our society" because I have
lived in America for many years, and I see a lot of abominable deviations
in the culture, of some pressure which the modern press is putting in the
minds of the average people . Take for instance the recent developments
in the American media : we see that the most thrilling news is coming
mostly from the orifices below the belt; the media pumps up local gossip
to worldwide proportions. I'm referring, of course, to last season's sex
scandals. All this distribution of sperm - what is this country turning
into? A nonsensical society. Because of all this, there are a lot of tasks for
the intellectuals in any society, including this outwardly prosperous and
wide and stable American one,
to
take on.
Susan Sontag: I
want to say, first, I agree with Vassily. But this brings
me back to Adam's point. I am not saying that tribalism or national
feeling is obsolete. I am not saying that the rich societies are not in crisis.
A Le Pen is exactly what you would expect, because the rich societies
have to face a completely new situation, which is that they are now
multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-racial. Despite the resurgence of xeno–
phobia and other nationalist values, the point is that they will continue
to be multi-racial and multi-national societies. This is the form the pros–
perous nations have inevitably taken; we are living in an era of perma–
nent, unstoppable migration from one country to another. The old no–
tions of borders don't exist. I'm not saying that
because
this is the fact,
