Life without desire and society without memory: Loot by Nadine Gordimer

(Nota: este es el primer post que publico en ingls. Es una coautora con Alex Hibbett licenciada en literatura y jefe de prctica de esa especialidad en la PUCP)

Gonzalo Portocarrero Alex Hibbett

Loot by Nadine Gordimer is quite an extraordinary story. It is not a lineal narrative, not even a coherent one. It is perva ded by poetry and symbolism. It has a dream-like texture. It can be read as an allegory of South Africas attitude towards their recent past. And, in more general terms, as an attempt to think over the relations between life and desire and, on the other hand, the relations between memory and social links. No doubt it can be understood in different ways. Notwithstanding the efforts made, there is always something left unexplained. After thinking the story through, we have arrived at the following interpretation. There was a man who wanted an object without knowing exactly what it was. He was a well-known member of the apartheid regime. Once the regime was overthrown he decided to withdraw from the new society. He felt that in the new order there was no place for him. He reached a point in which nothing seemed to catch his attention any more. Then he retired. He bought a house not very far from the city, on the top of a hill facing the ocean. He wanted to be alone. He avoided all commitments. He pretended to be happy with this situation. The only thing he could do was wait for the object of his desire to appear. Meanwhile, he was really sad. The only meaning of his life was to wait. And he waited for a long time. He knew that the object would come as a surprise, from the realm of the unthinkable. Nevertheless, he had discovered but neglected some clues. So, we can presume, he was ambiguous about confronting his being in the world. A long time ago he had bought a picture of a great wave. An impending catastrophe was depicted there. The picture was the clue. During some years this picture occupied a prominent place in his bedroom, he could not help seeing it. But once he decided to place the picture above his bed. From then on, it was almost invisible. So he lost touch with the only link he had to the object he was looking for. He ignored how sad he was. One night, while he was sleeping, the unthinkable happened. A big earthquake produced the withdrawal of the ocean. He then realized, suddenly, that the object was there, on the sea bed. He ran enthusiastically to the beach. There were lots of people there. They were looking for valuable items. And there were all kinds of things. They were fighting amongst each other, grabbing whatever seemed most promising. But not him, he was looking for the object. And then it was there. It was a mirror. Finally he had discovered what he had wanted all his life. As soon as he took possession of the mirror he was ready to return. However, neither he, nor the rest of the people realized that the big wave was behind them and was about to swallow them all. A mirror? A mirror hidden in the oceans depths? Was that really the object he had missed without knowing so? Was this object not the cause of his death? How to make sense of these facts? The ocean is the primordial source of all life. Besides the ocean stands for what is unconscious, what is hidden by repression because it is unacceptable. On the other hand, the mirror represents the possibility of knowing the image of oneself. We have an identity insofar as we have a mirror in which we can recognize ourselves. And what we recognize is our desire. We are subjects to a fault; we exist as long as we have a desire that provides us with a cause for our actions. So we have to conclude that what he wanted was to know his (real) desire. During his whole life he had been a man without a personal project, out of touch with his inner feelings. He acted out of habit, mechanically. Not surprisingly he felt that there was something that evaded him. When he retired, he concentrated on waiting for the object from which he believed he was going to learn a truer way of living. And it is significant that the only mirror in which he could make his desire visible was the one hidden in the sea. So the big catastrophe was the only possibility of reaching the answer he was waiting for. But this

answer was of mortal consequence. That is to say: the moment he saw his image was the prelude to his death. So we have to ask, what did he see in the mirror? Why was he taken by the great wave? Why was death his redemption? It is clear that he expected a kind of salvation from his waiting. It is also clear that what he found was his death. In a certain sense he was already dead. His life was empty, deprived of joy. The desire to desire was what kept him living. So there is no other conclusion but to accept that what he saw in the mirror was his own emptiness, that there was not a primordial and forgotten desire that he could stick to in order to enjoy living. His expectation kept him living, preserving him from this truth. Redemption was only a false hope. The capacity to desire depends on our relations with our fellow humans. The expectation of desiring outside human relations is a myth of an impossible self-sufficiency. A pure personal desire, not formed in social interaction, would be an instinct. And we human beings are not defined by instincts. In the end, the belief in a destiny that runs outside the social can not be upheld. The confrontation with the mirror made this truth visible to him. During his whole life he maintained the hope that beyond his commitments to politics there was something innocent and unspoiled in him, something that would appear in due course. But it was not true. He died while he was sleeping, which is, after all, a peaceful way of dying. He left this world without knowing what was happening to him. In his dream he confronted his hopes lack of substance. He was liberated of a life he never managed to take beyond social habits, despite of his nave illusions. His self deception was to think he was not affected by the things he did insofar as he thought he had a deeper essence, that will be revealed later on life.

II

He dreamt about a big earthquake, a major catastrophe. An event such as that represents the desire for the end of a situation and, perhaps, the desire for a fresh start. At the beginning of his dream, he just watched what was happening. After the sea drew back, making the sea bed with its treasures visible, people rush to loot anything that had a price. Orgiastic joy gave men, women and their children strength to heave out of the slime and sand what they did not know they wanted, quickened their staggering gait as they range, and this was more than profiting by happenstance, it was robbing the power of nature before which they have fled helpless. Take, take; while grabbing they were able to forget the wreck of their houses and the loss of time-bound possessions. Not a very flattering conception of human beings. They forgot their losses thanks to the acting out of the drive to loot. Human beings are seen as scavengers. They want to posses even if they do not have a real need. To posses is a compensation for their meaningless lives, even more so if possession was taking place in a kind of orgiastic festival, full of a joy enhanced by a sense of danger. The image evokes a feeling of rejection of the human condition. It appears to be eager, selfish and aimless. Totally unworthy and despicable. In this scenario the dreamer locates himself as a character that is different insofar as he is looking for something definite. But, as we have seen, there was no reason for him to live. He thought he had a pure desire but as soon as he faced the mirror, confronting his emptiness, he realized that life was not worth living. Neither for him, nor for the others. In a certain sense he chose to die. The others were killed in his dream because they were thought of as undeserving to live. In effect, after the big change brought about by the falling of the apartheid regime, South Africans did not see their past, they dedicated themselves to taking whatever was at their reach, consume and loot were their catchwords. These attitudes worked as a kind of compensation for the lack of those social links that would allow them to have more rewarding lives. In any case this image of the others as eager and unhappy is a further justification for not wanting to live. So the story condenses, in a cryptic (prudent?) way, a very harsh assessment of the post apartheid South African situation. In the end, the looters and the man killed by the big wave will accompany the bodies of those dropped from planes during the dictatorship. So in the end all of them will become spectres beneath the ocean. Nothing has been learned. There is no memory. In a certain sense these bodies have not been properly buried. Despite of being unwanted they are alive insofar as they cannot be forgotten because they do not have a proper place in the collective consciousness. They will be brought to the public realm,

periodically, by people claiming justice. Their existence represents an open wound. The white perpetrators, the black victims and the looters. So in the end the lesson is clear: no society is possible without the elaboration of a memory that can separate the present from the past.

III

The enunciation of the story is quite peculiar. It starts with the narration of the earthquake and people looting the seabed. These events are presented as if they have occurred. But behind these seemingly objective events there is a personal fantasy not deprived, however, of a certain truth. In any case the existence of this (white) person is revealed by a narrator who tells the story to a listener who, in the middle of a personal communication, is supposed to believe and understand the whole plot. But things are more complicated, the narrator that tells the story is a fictional character. It is a mask used by a writer. A mask that is necessary to prevent the storys inverisimilitude spoiling it. Finally the story is presented as a sort of myt h told by someone to someone. In effect, if the dreamer died while sleeping, how can we know his dream? Let us summarize the problem of enunciation. The first part of the story is narrated from the third person. The perspective is objective and detached. We have just one character, the people who are looting. But, as we are going to realize this description is just a part of a dream. A dream elaborated by a person who is the only personal character of the story. Thus, the whole story is about this character and his view of the world. This view seems, however, quite realistic. And the lesson is that it is very difficult to learn from life. On the other hand, how is it possible to tell the dream of a person who is supposed to die during his very dream? The only possibility is assuming a mythical or allegorical perspective. What is told is not an objective truth, not even a plausible plot, it is a fantasy. The fact that is narrated in the present tense could indicate it being a fable; something that describes and explains the present situation. It is a narrative that is fabulous, just like a dream. So the rules of logic are not applicable. That is the reason that explains the appearance of the figure of the writer after the first scene: But the writer knows something no-one else knows, the sea change of imagination. So the change of perspective is announced. The objective tone of the narration is abandoned. Now the story is told as it if were a rumour that circulates in the context of a speaker to listener relationship. A negative feeling that Nadine Gordimer wants to share with us, her readers. Let us go back to the title. What kind of life is possible without desire? And what kind of society is the one that has no memory? Gordimer suggests that a life without desire is based on a mixture of habit and fantasy about something that will not arrive. And despite what its owner might think, it is a life in despair, sad and largely deprived of joy. On the contrary, a more liveable life implies to be in touch with ones ways of enjoying. Bu t, at the same time, inscribing this enjoyment in relations in which nobody is hurt. Society teaches us what to desire but if this teaching is not articulated with our particular historical and biological configuration then we have the divorce between habit and fantasy. On the other hand, a society without memory is one in which social links are fragile, where resentments are there, waiting for being acted as violence. So collective action is almost impossible. Each individual looks after himself.