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guilty of wanting to secede from the federation. (The Bosnians had the
advantage of belonging to a multinational state.) By banishing them from
the human race, we no longer had to feel compassion for their misery.
We grouped the victims together with the henchmen.
One would like to applaud enthusiastically that common altruism that
intends to overcome Eurocentric as well as local stereotypes and supersti–
tion through benevolence and instruction. Whatever sympathy or
agreement it may inspire in us, it nonetheless seems problematic in more
than one way, especially when it betrays, alters, or disfigures the original
spirit of cosmopolitanism. First, taking up again an illusion appropriate to
illumination, two realms are always confused in this kind of reflection: the
ethical and the aesthetic.
In
the arts, where borrowing, plagiarism, and
combinations form the source of creative richness, desirable syntheses oc–
cur that are impossible to translate into daily life. We cannot profit from
another civilization's customs and habits without renouncing our own to
a greater or lesser extent, unless we consider being cosmopolitan simply
to mean eating couscous, tacos, fried rice, wearing Chinese silk, listening
to Oriental music, or dying one's hair with henna. Yet certainly no single
book, painting, or musical work carries in itself a particular moral im–
perative. The belief, for example, that the "spirit of the novel," in other
words, "the playful subversion of dogma and orthodoxy," act as a critical
conscience, unmooring us from our identifYing impulses, depends on a
very generous but unverifiable perspective. Even if the novel, as Milan
Kundera well understood, is the democratic genre par excellence, one
that presumes tolerance and conflicting points of view, there is no
obligatory passage from the work to daily life. I can forget my prejudices
while reading and enter the universe of a Chinese or South American
author. I may feel myself on an equal footing with another era or other
customs. Yet that will not alter my degree of open-mindedness once I
abandon that literary space. Skeptical, ironic while reading, temporarily
liberated from thousands of ties to my community, I become once again
sectarian, partial, recaptured as soon as I return to my century and con–
front my peers. Works of art in themselves are profoundly amoral and are
thus unable to eradicate humanity's barbaric foundation .
In
our naivete,
we believe that talent, intelligence, and sensitivity are inseparable from
higher values, that they nourish and elevate us. But there is no link be–
tween genius, liberty, and justice. Obscurantist epochs have given rise to
sublime works; tolerant epochs have proven arid. Even abject master–
pieces (Sade, Celine) are nonetheless important inquiries into the human
spirit.
Or, to express it more brutally still : we do not like the peoples of the
Middle East simply because we read the Koran or "A Thousand and One
