Once Michel Foucault declared to Noam Chomsky, “The proletariat makes war with the ruling class because, for the first time in history, it wants to take power.” Chomsky was surprised by such a comment and disagreed. He again disagreed when Foucault commented: “One makes war to win, not because it’s just.” Frustrated on the difficulty of sharing ideas with Foucault, Chomsky had said that they as if did not share the same moral world. “It’s as if he was from a different species, or something.”
Foucault always surprised Chomsky and many others with his radical views. On success and justice, I always seem to understand the French philosopher. We all – from individuals engaged in arguments, drivers trying to overtake the others, political parties trying to overpower commoners to religious, economic and political institutions forcing dogmas on peoples – want to win at any cost. From religious leaders, kings to revolutionary heroes, winning have been the prime motive of the struggles and wars. Amidst such aims of winning, justice has been less a motive than a mask to hide injustice. There are few men and women looking to win for justice.
There are problems with justice itself, regarding its origin and purpose. Justice itself is born out of injustice, comments a wise man to Socrates. The famous guru wanted to hear from Glaucon and he explains something like this. After doing justice and suffering injustice, men wanted to have neither. They thus needed mutual agreement to do injustice and not be punished and to suffer injustice without retaliation. We all submit to such agreements because we want both. Winning thus seems to be a natural ally to justice whose nature and origin is injustice. If you do not agree, then forget such propositions and let us return to the idea of winning. Tri-Chandra college incident not merely speaks about our aggression for winning but our nature of winning with violence and brutality, which is becoming a habit of publicly active Nepali cultures. As long as there are objects to win, justice fares very feebly. Since human beings cannot do away with the motives to win, winning and injustice will go together.
To think about cultures where both to win and to be just go together is to think about ridiculously harmonious societies. What do we do then? Nothing comes as a readymade answer. Agreeing to the idea of winning and justice is trying to see things saintly. There are no schools and saints these days who can teach us to win with justice. Thus, what is the solution? There is no way out.
The only thing that comes to our mind is that as responsible members of communities and cultures, we can just be self aware of winning, justice and injustice. And those who are not, they should be handled by whatever law we have at hand.
Two days after the prime minister asked the police to be harsh on criminals, people become hopeful. But as soon as the words and promises do not find proper execution, we return to square one.
Winning without justice leaves cultures without rules, norms, reasons and conscious purpose. Cultures descend into the un-thought. A human being, Foucault wrote, committed neither to reason not to purposive action must prepare to let itself go. Francisco Goya, whom Foucault always appreciated, entitled one of his etchings Caprichos “The sleep of reason produces monsters.” Goya is a familiar artist to many Nepali graduate students of major English.
Tri-Chandra campus incident shows how winning at any cost descends into unreason and brutality. All of us are turning into monsters of unreason, both those who commit and those who witness. I find the campus incident more shocking because colleges and universities are the locations of unconditional quest for knowledge. These spaces appropriate reason to its best. That is why such locations bring faith in knowledge. But they now are the worst sites of cultural decadence in a country like Nepal.
Since we cannot be self-aware of how we win and how we indulge into injustice, there is little hope for solutions. To realize how winning is sublime is to observe how Roger Federer won this year’s Wimbledon men’s tennis title. The hard-earned winning stroke was a site of glory!
pallabi@pallabi.wlink.com.np
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