The Enrooted Fear in Argentine Academia. Its remote origins and fatal consequences. by Eduardo R. Saguier CONICET Researcher http://www.er-saguier.org What are the wise historical (cultural, political, sociological and psychological) reasons of the deep fear that has taken roots in the public opinion of Argentine scholars? What is the reason of self-censorship, consent or resistance to issue critical opinions on matters related to the democratization of science, arts and culture? Why have many well-known scholars refrained from speaking about the authoritarian and seditious dominance prevailing in Argentine cultural structures? Why hasn’t the research institutes of National Universities (e.g.: Gino Germani Institute) addressed this issue, and why in those research projects (e.g.: Naishtat and Toer, 2005), on the contrary, the questions in the surveys they conducted dealt just on relatively irrelevant issues (formal representation)? It is difficult to answer these questions and provide an approximate diagnosis and assess the origin of this traumatic experience given there is not much evidence and there are few witnesses and little research to resort to (most case files are not available for research because they are classified as confidential documents). Even at international level, studies in this respect –apart from traditional studies such as Gouldner's (1980), Collins's (1979) and Ringer (1969)—are exclusively focused on the professional class (Martin, 1991; and Schmidt, 2000). Nevertheless, despite this scantiness, our obligation is to try to speculate on an answer to investigate the apathy and indifference of Argentine science and culture, as well as the negligent omission of their agents, in order to throw some light upon the crisis we are going through. Historically, political science has proven that fear in their different versions is a typical element of fascist and authoritarian regimes, where the first victims are independent scholars, and that in democratic regimes, instead, such fear fades away as democratic liberties get consolidated. However, the current situation in Argentine cultural context enables to see an adverse reality, for even though democratic institutions have been restored, the neo-liberal model has been partially defeated, and the Pardon Laws (Obediencia Debida and Punto Final) were removed, there is a persistent fear to the political power among scholars, artists, scientists of both hard and soft sciences, either young or old, at an increasingly higher level and intensity. An explanation of these painful situations that still survive would be that, in the face of the incomplete attempt to restore democracy, the partial defeat of neo-liberalism and the slow mechanism of the restored judicial process, by failing to completely eradicate such triple legacy –-which has been materialized in the permanence of collaborationists of that time and in antidemocratic practices, laws, regulations, rules and jurisprudence that are still in force-- participation and mutual trust of the intellectual community has apparently not been able to be reinforced. But an explanation, of an even deeper substance, are those that have been given recently by philosophers Claudia Hilb, Héctor Schmucler, Ricardo Panzetta, Tomas Abraham and Leon Rozitchner. These explanations were based on the interview published to the ex guerrilla militant Hector Jouve (where he describes the executions done by themselves of a couple of guerrilla men apparently “broken” and the brief presence in the guerrilla camp of philosopher Pancho Aricó), and to the heart-breaking confession and the dense and wise replies done to scholars Jinkis, Ritvo and Grüner by Oscar del Barco. Hilb centers her explanation in the notions of revolution and equality. Panzetta refers to Jouve´s report, Schmucler to the executions of Rottblat and Groswald, Abraham to Barco´s repentance, and Rozitchner to the delay of more than twenty years in producing the repentance. As it has been said by Rozitchner, by having failed “…to give names and faces and life to the phantoms we raised in others, we failed to show those [phantoms] spread by the past terror into the political present, even though they still remain dormant inside us” (Rozitchner, 2006). That´s precisely why, in order to clarify the past, Del Barco urges in his letter the laureate poet Juan Gelman to speak out. The same petition could also be extended by Del Barco to the remaining editorial members of the journal Pasado y Presente, mainly those corresponding to the new series of april-june 1973 (Feldman, Nun, Portantiero, Torre, Tula, etc.), as well as the authors of its main, anonymous and irresponsible article which idealizes the peronist movement under the title “La ´Larga Marcha´ al Socialismo en la Argentina” (1). This need of transparency obeys to the fact that a decade after the last revolutionary adventure (1973-74), that ended in a genocide, and after their return from exile, some of those actors appeared now belonging to another political identity radically opposed (UCR), and with public responsibilities; as was the case of the intellectual cell built by business man Meyer Goodbar known as the Esmeralda Group (2). The suspicion of political adventurism and opportunism, disguised as a permanent search for a political casting anchor, combined with clandestine financial links, enrooted in the Argentine academia, as has been suggested very elliptically by Castañeda (1993), Burgos (2004) and Kohan (2004), could not then be the surprise for nobody (3). Incomplete democracy would be then that which carefully maintains formalities and protocol, but where transparency and the self-criticism, debate, merit, competition and exogamy elements of democratic practices are dangerously absent, due to the lack of political and academic determination to revise the past, produce the necessary self-criticsm and to freshen up present cultural institutions, which not by chance are preserved under tight, fragmented and contaminated conditions. The harmful example this gives spreads horizontally to the liberal professional levels, and to the lower levels of educational institutions, to the point that the present political power boycotts the creation of Communitarian Telecentres (4); and, on the contrary, pretends to embark our country in the mercantile and anti-pedagogical Project of Nicholas Negroponte (5). For this reason, merely amending the Higher Education Law, would not be enough, because what is demanding is to generate in-depth democratization of every cultural institution, including those related to mass media. That is, a community where scholars are not physically pursued because of their opinions and where there is no censorship, prison or gallows for the "sin" of confessing or dissenting, but where the fear of "dislocation" or “displacement” from those in power –jeopardizing the job or wasting financial privileges such as incentives, grants, benefits and subsidies—is culturally rooted and psychologically embedded. In other words, a community governed by a symbolic, implicit and/or latent illegitimate violence, expressly aimed to domesticate and control the mind, moral sense and vocations, thus subordinating scholars to the status of bootlickers of the authorities, imposing silence on two ends: frightening the youth with blocking their plans for academic promotion and the old guard of intellectuals who insist in their independence with deliberately subverting their right to decent retirement pay. These entrenched and embedded aspects are likely to refrain them from exercising their will to confess or dissent, propose changes, or report abnormalities or corruption practices or express any solidarity to those who are discriminated, condemned and/or morally harassed considering their independent judgment. Even if pressed by the pain of the vacuum, defenselessness and loss of their self-esteem, the latter are likely to be in a pathetic situation where they "would never expect to be given a hand, some help or a favor". This heartless and bleak panorama, which shows no mercy to those who the system stigmatizes as scapegoats and which, on the contrary, rewards and promotes flatterers, henchpersons and victimizers, intimidates the intellectual community, expels it into desertion, exclusion and expatriation, increasing the gap with central countries, or encourages it to find shelter in pathologies or behavior patterns that violate academic codes. These patterns are governed by intrigue, gossip, secrecy, extortion, blackmail, revenge, treason and the pursuit of security and protection in cliques, factions and cronies, where eventual booties may be shared, providing shelter as if they were casemates or bunkers against indifference, discrimination, deprivation, and retaliation. The intellectual urge is likely to be entirely focused on "becoming a friend of the authorities", on reinforcing and consolidating chieftain-type identities, and on engaging in unhealthy relations such as pulling strings and knowing the right people and coalescing into sects or lodges, to enable successful contests for the various instances of academic, scientific and cultural power (university senate elections, membership in committees and publishing commissions, membership in juries and arbitration committees, organization of congresses and conferences, etc.) All hope for immunity, recognition, co-option and academic promotion is pinned on such conspiratorial muteness and on those servile, reverential, opportunistic and self-seeking power relations, and not on individual intellectual merit, or epistemological or methodological breakings resulting from research, presentations and exhibitions, or the technological innovation implemented to show whatever they produce. This perverse search for an illegitimate niche is also likely to lead them to engage in various fictitious and cynical mechanisms (conceit, imitation, simulation, adulteration, plagiarism, etc.) and a constant tendency to shy away from controversy or frank debate, where originality, creativity and the break with established elements would be persistently absent. Notas (1) The idealization of Peronism done by Pasado y Presente in 1973 was studied in a dozen of pages (Burgos, 2004, 208-217). But in that criticism Burgos did not study the following paragraph: “Estos son, a nuestro entender, los rasgos que definen la originalidad del movimiento peronista. De un movimiento que, con el triunfo electoral del 11 de marzo [1973] dio los primeros pasos hacia una nueva etapa de su historia. Ese día, el peronismo actuó como síntesis política del conjunto de clases que se opusieron, desde 1966, al proyecto monopolista, cuantificó en las urnas todo el odio acumulado por el pueblo frente al imperialismo y sus aliados internos. El pronunciamiento masivo que significó el voto, puso también al descubierto el error de quienes, desde una izquierda que salía de la crisis del reformismo y que había logrado una primera inserción en el movimiento de masas, propugnaron el voto en blanco, alentando una vana ilusión de pureza programática”. (I owe this number of Pasado y Presente to the generosity of Martín Sivak, son of my friend Jorge Sivak) (2) Juan Carlos Portantiero , Juan Carlos Torre, Emilio De Ipola,Hugo Rappaport, Pablo Giussani, Pedro Parturesni y Sergio Bufano (Rodríguez, 2005). (3) see Burgos, 2004, 91 y 107. (4): Delgadillo, Gómez, and Stoll, 2000; (5) In the Project itself are involved Alejandro Piscitelli and Adrían Paenza, as well as an Institute of the Facultad de Ciencias Exactas of Buenos Aires run by Dr. Hugo Scolnik. For a reply to Negroponte´s Project, see Villanueva Mansilla, 2006.
I sympathize, the US is itself going through something similar. When the learned and artistic minds of our countries fear free speech and outspokeness, anything may be accomplished by those seeking complete power over their populus.
