[Xmca-l] Re: Hitler's World by T. Snyder

[Annalisa Aguilar]

Dear David P.

Thanks for clarifying. It is an informative essay, but it was also nauseating for me to read. I didn't mean to cross-post to distract when I made my reply concerning the peekaboo between a toddler and a baby ape, but for other reasons.

Although... it is interesting to juxtapose the developmental aspects of peekaboo and infantile concepts of object permanence, with the consideration of why Hitler did not succeed. An accidental smashing of particles on the list that seems to have legs. 

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What bothered me about the essay is hard to articulate, but the best metaphor for more immediate translation (which may fail here in text) would be like being invited to the viewing of an art photograph in a MOMA exhibition with the content material of a lynching incident in the US south. The object's existence is going to be hurtful just for existing as an object. 

I thought, gee, how a white supremacist could actually de-light in reading the Snyder essay. This is what bothered me. 

Then, I asked myself, why was this article appearing in NYTRB so near Rosh Hoshanah/Yom Kippur? 

I did not write these things initially, because I did not want to appear accusatory about your intentions, and so I think what I was really asking is for the connections you made that motivated you to post it to the list. So thanks.

I hope I didn't overexplain that. 

There is this unspoken game, that whoever mentions Hitler first loses. And here "the game" started that way. 

Another part that is difficult (for me... while considering the article) is to consider that Hitler actually could be an intellectual, because these entities (the concept of Hitler and the concept of an intellectual) don't seem to actually coincide. My mind suffers a terrible cognitive meltdown of sorts.

I do appreciate that there could be the illusion of a sense of relief to think that there was an actual idea structure behind Hitler's worldview (It is above my pay grade to say that there is an actual idea structure there). However, what is most nauseating is that it doesn't make any sense, and it transgresses sensibilities on so many levels, moral, scientific, psychological, historical, the list goes on. I know I'm not saying anything that no one already knows. Or is it that what I'm saying is something everyone knows. I guess that depends if one got up on the nihilist side of the bed today (homage to Henry's Buddhist comment, there). 

To bring the Mobius strip back to the beginning, I submit that even reading this essay was hurtful to me, that is how awful these "ideas" are. Isn't this how double binds function?

Kind regards, with the sound of one hand not clapping...

Annalisa