Forlag: Agora nr. 3–4 2024, (Norge)
(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The journal Agora has now published a themed issue about Georg Johannesen (GJ, 1931–2005). The number is edited by Arnfinn Åslund and Geir O. Rønning. They helped start up Agora in 1983, and GJ "was an important source of inspiration for the student community that founded the journal".
The editorial team also includes Amund Børdahl and Hans Marius Hansteen from the Rhetorical Forum in Bergen, which was founded in 1988 with GJ as leader. Georg Johannesen was also a member of Agora's editorial board from 1994 to 2005. The connection between the editorial team and the theme is therefore close. Everyone in the editorial team knew Georg Johannesen personally and is of course familiar with the authorship.
A highlight of this issue is over 20 pages of poems by GJ that have not previously been published, in addition to reprints of poems that have been published in newspapers. In addition, there are a couple of early articles, some notes on Greek tragedy and a text on basic values in humanistic research.
In the introduction, the editors write:
"It is, on the whole, a form of writing that requires diligence and piety, to put it in the old fashioned way. We can translate piety with mania. Much of what Georg Johannesen has written, from Ars moriendi (1965) and the rowdy comedy Kassandra (1967) to Simon's book (1980) and Mongstad-the novel, as well as a good portion of especially the late one essayisticsone, is extreme literature. Such literature attracts extreme readers, but reasonably scares away those who were looking forward to sitting undisturbed in the armchair and enjoying a so-called good book."
Some characteristics of Johannesen
"Manic" and "extreme literature" are apt terms for much of what GJ has written. But when the editors translate reader's "piety" with mania, it is difficult to understand. There are enough examples of GJ attracting extreme readers. But they are not represented in this number.
They are devout, listening and respectful.
Some historical characteristics of GJ are reproduced in a separate section: Per Buvik was annoyed 30 years ago by "all the self-indulgent and half-assed ways, which in the first instance may seem charming, but which in the second instance not infrequently dissolve as the private idiosyncrasies they are". Parts of GJ's poem "Den store kampsangen", which was published in MODERN TIMES on Women's Day 8 March 1977, received Grete Ramberg to "thinking about drunk high school students who have problems with their male sense of self" (MODERN TIMES 31.08.77). These are fresh characteristics and not extreme readings.
Jon Langdal has described GJ's form as "anarchocryptic". The articles in Agora's theme issue do not really try to analyze this form critically. None of the seven original contributions can be described as manic extreme readings: they are devout, listening and respectful. Kristian Lødemel Sandberg provides a good analysis of the pamphlet genre based on GJ's pamphlet on Beyer's Norwegian literary history (1975), and Aspen Grønlie writes insightfully about autobiographical elements in GJS's essays. Further discussions Ingrid Nielsen the relationship between lyricism and rhetoric in GJ's poems; Kristina Leganger Iversen writes about the narrative technique in Alfreds Fidjestøl's GJ biography; and Arild Utaker about GJ's understanding of rhetoric.
Negativity and aura
Arnfinn Åslund provides a comprehensive analysis of two poems in Ars vivendi (1999). The reading is erudite and can be recommended to anyone interested in poetry. The problem is that it moves within GJ's own reference system and operates in a self-confirming bubble. Is this "piety"?
A regular in Åslunds analysis is "that the sign, whether spoken or written, is something other than what the sign refers to. It is separated from its content, from its object. This absence points in the direction of Adorno's concept of non-identity. There is always something that escapes our concepts" (p. 30).
Åslund can write 40 pages about two small poems.
Åslund and Ornament promotes a 'metaphysics of absence'. "This negativity opens up a process of interpretation which is in principle infinite" (p. 39). Åslund can thus write 40 pages about two small poems. "The poem's laconic expression has silence as a connotation" (p. 31), asserts Åslund, without becoming less eloquent for that reason.
The non-identity of Adorno is associated with another intellectual mantra#: Benjamin's theory of aura loss. "The radiance of the aura is used as a metaphor for the power of fascination that can be experienced in the face of a unique work of art here and now" (p. 37). The aura of Benjamin is somewhat absent, just like the non-identical in Adorno. The non-identical and the "auratic drips in through the totally managed world", writes Åslund. "The totally managed world" is also a cliché from the Frankfurt School: the world is stylized as "identical" and "totally" managed. Therefore, strong lye is needed to resist: "non-identity" and longing for the "aura". For there to be art, "an auratic residue is also required in the modern" (p. 49).
Åslund concludes that "[lyric] transcendence requires that the negative be kept open, the unfinished, the non-identical that evades social control" (p.52).
Linneberg's criticism of Fidjestøl
Arild Linneberg's contribution is a critique of Fidjestøl's GJ biography from 2022. Fidjestøl have learned too little from GJ, because he does not problematize the biography genre! He is not non-identical enough! (p. 125) But there is a difference between representation and reality: Language is not identical to reality!
Linneberg repeats Sigfried Kracauers 100-year-old critique of the genre: Biography is an escape from reality, since the subject has gained less power! Citizenshipit clings to the individual after it has lost its meaning. But Linneberg does not mention that the only one that escapes Kracauer's eye is Trotsky's autobiography:
"That is the reason why the individual who takes shape in this autobiography is of a different kind than in bourgeois literature. It is an individual who is not self-sufficient, but who becomes real by the fact that the reality behind it becomes transparent" (Weimar Essays 2022, p. 245). Fidjestøl does not show through historical emphasis on context that GJ not is self-sufficient? But Linneberg criticizes the biographer: "Representations of history can never coincide with the reality that is presented, and often the formative tendency takes over" (p. 129).
The alternative is Walter Benjamin: "History consists of memory images that must be interpreted as dreams." Irrationalism takes the place of biography: Source criticism is replaced by dream interpretation! Fidjestøl is blamed for "Adorno is only mentioned twice, and Benjamin once" (p. 133). GJ ends his authorship in Exile (2005) "by referring to thinkers who stood for the complete opposite of biography's principle of organizing history" (p. 134).
Biography is an escape from reality, since the subject has gained less power! The bourgeoisie clings to the individual...
Absence metaphysics and the right-wing wave
It's time to come to terms with metaphysics of absenceone for GJ, Åslund and Linneberg. The 'method' is presented paradigmatically in GJ's essay on the right wave. It was published as a "preface" in Bjørklund and Hagtvet's anthology The right-wing wave – the turning point in Norwegian politics (1981). In an interview with Dag og Tid on 14.12.79/XNUMX/XNUMX, GJ was asked: "What about the right-wing wave – don't you want to stop it?" He replied: "The right-wing wave is media news. The so-called world opinion is a multinational opinion industry with headquarters in the eastern part of the United States. [...] News and porn are about the same" (The way of thinking, p. 172). Half a year earlier, Martin Kolberg (Bergens Arbeiderblad 25.05.79) had determined the core of the right-wing wave that was now sweeping the country: "I am myself enough. The money is best in one's own pocket. My initiative must be rewarded. Away with the mob, more police.”
"The right-wing wave is a word and thus everything is said." This is how GJ's language use analysis begins of – what? The phenomenon, the word, the meaning? He is neither for nor against the right-wing wave, because he does not know if it exists! That's pretty well done after the word had been used hundreds of times for over two years. The reference was clear: the Conservative Party made strong progress in the municipal and county council elections on 17.09.79 September 18.09.79, over seven percent. Dagbladet (1981) was able to announce that "The right-wing wave is sweeping over Norway" with a large picture of a smiling Willoch. But for GJ in XNUMX, the word is incomprehensible:
« The right wave can be a three-headed troll or a calf with three heads, first and foremost it is a word, that is, a poem.” GJ's 'method' is thus not wanting to understand or know what something is. Thus GJ clears the ground for himself, the right-wing wave became a fantasy figure and the word poetry. A month before Norli lost the election to Willoch in September 1981, one could read that the right-wing wave was "magical and mythical". The metaphysics of absence, the alleged incomprehensibility, was the basis for GJ to ride his own fads. This is a basic structure in GJ's own rhetorical control technique.
"The transcendence of poetry requires that the negative be kept open, the unfinished, the non-identical that evades social control."
From rhetoric to politics?
The idea behind the rhetorical turn in the The Norwegian way of writing (1981) was that the readers suffered from two serious faults: They "have a good grasp of the social sciences and a great interest in politics instead of a great interest in poetics and a good grasp of linguistics".
But since then, rhetorical analyzes and strategies are used extensively communication agencies and spin doctors. Politicians, PR and advertising people wrap the message in 'narratives'. Not least the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine have shown that it is difficult to penetrate propagandaone. What is needed now are the facts. And yes, the facts are 'constituted' (cf. the critique of positivism)! Facts are obtained by comparing sources with each other to reveal what is 'just' rhetoric. The ancient Greeks, who invented the term, limited rhetoric to the speech genre (cf. Aristotle). Rhetoric operated within the realm of the probable (gr. eikos) and did not provide certain knowledge (episteme). The extension of the concept of rhetoric to total rhetoric ignores the distinction between truth and probability. Everything becomes narratives, paradigms, representations. This invites manipulation and weakens the reality orientation.
MODERN TIMES's predecessor Orientering and 'the third position' from the founding of the newspaper in 1953 has again become politically hyper-topical. But if such political criticism is to be continued in a new cold war, the metaphysics of absence in GJ's rhetoric must be toned down. GJ's criticism of NATO and western news media has shown its relevance in the Ukraine war and the conflict in the Middle East. And the right-wing wave is again one fact in many countries in Europe and in the USA.
