Liberating Cassandra
Liberating Cassandra
On the desacralisation of wilful ignorance
“The need for truth is more sacred than any other”, wrote French philosopher Simone Weil. (Not to be confused with the French politician Simone Veil who was born a couple of decades later and lived several decades longer—no thanks to the Nazis though. There, I told you there were several famous French Simones worthy of discussion: they will crop up again.) Weil continued: “Yet it is never mentioned. We fear reading once we have realised the quantity and enormity of the material falsehoods that are spread shamelessly, even in books by the most reputable authors. One thus reads as if one were drinking water from a dodgy well.”1
Yet here I am, nonetheless inviting you to read (as did Weil), hopeful that “future’s shining fruit/ can sprout from the navel of this present waste”, as Sylvia Plath mused in her bathtub.2 Plath dreamed of transforming her confining materiality into “an imagined ship” on which she would “wildly sail/ among sacred islands of the mad till death/ shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real”. (Sadly, she did voyage definitively into those “sacred islands of the mad”, taking her own life in 1963, at the age of 30, after several previous attempts over the years.)
It is, in fact, rare, that the sacred is not invoked by various celebrities including writers, philosophers and politicians—and of course followers of various religions. It is also invoked in the everyday: “my mealtimes are sacred”; “my yoga classes are sacred”; “is nothing sacred?” and so on. We sacralise anything and everything. Rarely truth, though. In fact Ludwig Feuerbach (yep, another nineteenth century German philosopher), observed that truth was considered profane and only illusion was sacred, while contemporary AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky considers that “to worship a sacred mystery [is] just to worship your own ignorance”.
And yet, French symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé claimed in an 1862 article defending the sacred (and elitist) mystery of poetry, “everything that is sacred and wishes to remain so must envelop itself in mystery”. For Mallarmé, the mystery was protection of “art for art’s sake”: “let the masses read about morals, but for pity’s sake do not give them our poetry to spoil” (my translation). Yes, told you he was elitist.
This is the thing about sacralisation: what is sacred is untouchable, it is taboo. It comes to us from the Latin word sacer: “set off, restricted”, which then by extension meant “consecrated” and by the time it made it into Old French it was most definitely associated with all that was hallowed. What is sacred is owed both our reverence, as something set apart and untouchable, and our fear, lest we come too close to it with our mortal profanity such that we somehow taint its perfection. The sacred is at the core of all religions, but according to scholars from Daddy of Sociology Emile Durkheim to Cambridge Professor of Politics Harald Wydra passing via Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade, among many others, the sacred is also embedded in our social relations, whether religious or not, and in our political systems. For example, on 5 January this year, US President Joe Biden, in a speech marking the third anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, characterised US democracy as its “sacred cause”.
Even if individuals, as noted above, routinely use the term “sacred” as synonymous with “something precious, invaluable to me personally”, its use still places the object or activity so described on a pedestal, renders it inviolable, as something that must be preserved in order to maintain our very social fabric and individual integrity.
Whatever the context, once a certain activity, object or group of people is repeatedly described as sacred (whether religious or secular, collective or individual), it takes on a discursive power. That power of repetition cannot be underestimated when put to the service of a political narrative: when something is framed as “sacred” with such consistency and frequency, well, it must be, mustn’t it? Set apart. Untouchable. Deserving of not only our respect but our unquestioning reverence and even fear.
To illustrate my point, let’s take a trip to Durham. Not Durham UK, where the 138th Miners’ Gala has just taken place: a highly symbolic event this year as it marks the 40th anniversary of the UK Miners’ Strike. (Yes, I will celebrate that anniversary in a dedicated post soon: promise!) No, I’m taking you to Durham in North Carolina (NC), USA. As it happens, North Carolina has an interesting political history. During the American Civil War it ended up joining the Confederacy although for a long time it was Unionist. The story of that decision to secede is complicated but it is worth noting that although North Carolina was less dependent on slavery than its more southerly neighbours, Durham County was also the site of Stagville Plantation, one of the largest in the South and home, in 1860, to some 900 slaves.
But I digress. The reason I am mentioning Durham NC today is that a couple of days ago I came across a rather striking mural on the “Discover Durham” social media site. Produced by an outfit called SchraderArt, and painted in babyclothes pink, blue and white (the trans colours), the mural proclaimed that “trans lives are SACRED”. Intrigued, I did a little more digging, and came across multiple mural, billboard, T-shirt and so on initiatives across the USA, some of them very well funded, celebrating the “sacredness” of trans people and their lives. Yep, sacred: deserving of our unquestioning reverence.
To use an Australian idiom: yeah… nah. Translation: I understand what you are arguing, but the answer is NO. I don’t buy it. Not for one second. If I were to sacralise anything, I’d be following in Simone Weil’s footsteps, and adding in a touch of Albert Einstein for good measure. Einstein famously said that “the intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant”. Yeah, YES. (Although I do wonder how much of Mileva Marić’s intuition and rationality our Albert relied upon.)
Yes, truth. We need truth, we need to trust our intuition, and we need rational thinking. More than ever, in an age where untruth has become a sacred virtue and liars our heroes.
We need to believe Cassandra, not lock her up as a madwoman. As you know, Cassandra is that mythical Trojan princess who was gifted the ability to prophetise the future by the god Apollo, but because she refused his sexual advances to her, he condemned her to not be believed. So she foresaw the downfall of Troy but rather than pay attention, her father King Priam locked her away and kept her under guard.
There are two takes on Cassandra’s refusal of Apollo. One is that she promised him favours but once she had the gift of prophecy reneged on that promise (just like a bloody woman eh); the other is that she was pressured by Apollo but resisted the pressure (uppity feminist). Guess which version I prefer.
I dream of liberating thousands and millions of Cassandras of the uppity feminist kind, a chorus of voices that, raised in unison, will finally, finally, command attention as they speak the truth. Then, perhaps, we may yet see “future’s shining fruit sprout[ing]”, albeit probably not from the navels of those who are today overly self-absorbed with their own sacrality.
The Need for Roots: prelude towards a declaration of duties towards mankind, first published 1949 (my translation). All Weil’s works were published posthumously.
Sylvia Plath, “Tale of a Tub”, 1956 (the title is ano doubt a nod to Jonathan Swift’s 1704 prose satire A Tale of a Tub).