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rights can be offended.
Cate I used to love you.
Ian What’s changed?
Cate You.
Ian No. Now you see me. That all.
Cate You’re a nightmare. (33)
It is not Ian becoming a nightmare, but he is always a nightmare because his existence reveals how far the State would go in order to preserve its absolute power. “It’s my job. I love this country.” says Ian (32). Being the subject uniting the State, Ian
believes sometimes it is essential for the State to ignore the law in order to achieve the righteousness beyond the law. But when the State can present itself as a totality in the name of people, the individual can never compare himself to the State for being merely the governed object of State. So even when the righteousness beyond the law is claimed to be applied for the people, it can never be the righteousness of the individual. The righteousness Ian believes, therefore, is always a stranger to him, and that is why Ian is always afraid of his being killed.
The door of room is knocked four times in the play. At the first time, Ian “takes his gun from the holster and goes to the door,” he asks Cate to open the door, and there is only “a tray of sandwiches on the floor” (6). At the second and the third
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time, he asks the waiter to leave the things he orders on the floor (17, 34). The curious thing is that, at the first three times, when the door is opened, nobody stands behind the door. But it turns all different when the door is knocked again. Before Cate goes into the bathroom, she looks out of the window, “Look like there’s a war on.” says she casually as seeing a bird flying across the sky (33). When Ian stays alone, the door is knocked at its fourth time. Ian “draws the gun, goes to the door and listens,” then he decides to open the door, and the ignored war shows itself in flesh. “Outside is a Soldier with a sniper’s rifle,” and he “takes Ian’s gun easily” (36). A war suddenly
and quietly breaks out. Even Ian who works for the State does not expect it to happen.
The space symbolizing the protection of law is easily ruined. No matter how much one pays for it, it would be thrown into chaos whenever it needs to be.
The unveiled war forces the nakedness of human life to appear. In the fire of war, the audience would see how extreme the State can go because, as Jean Luc Nancy argues, “[w]ar is the monument, the festival, the somber and pure sign of the community in its sovereignty” (120). The soldier asks Ian to show his passport (37).
The request seems to suggest that the soldier would act in the law. But when he knows there is a woman in the bathroom, he shows his strong interest in raping her. He asks Ian, “What’s she like?” and “Is she soft?” (38). The soldier breaks the door after Cate runs away through the window. Seeing nobody there, the soldier says, “Gone. Taking
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a risk. Lots of bastard soldiers out there” (38). It is impossible for anyone to run away from the nightmare, from the original exclusion embodied in the human society. The scene ends by the destruction of the room. “There is a blinding light, then a huge explosion” (39). Even when one is inside the wall, the mechanism of war leaves no
one alone.
“The hotel has been blasted by a mortar bomb / . . . and everything is covered in dust which is still falling” (39). In embers, Ian and the soldier both lose
consciousness for a while. Ian wakes up first, but the soldier “wakes and turns his eyes and rifle on Ian with the minimum possible movement” (39), like a
well-programmed killing machine, always keeping his eyes on Ian.
Soldier Never met an Englishman with a gun before, most of them don’t know what gun is. You a soldier?
Ian Of sorts.
Soldier Which side, if you can remember.
Ian Don’t know what the sides are here.
Don’t know where . . .
(He trails off confused, and look at the Soldier.) Think I might be drunk
Soldier No. It’s real. (40)
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Disastrous war should be blocked out of the human world since there is nothing like war that tramples on human rights so thoroughly. In the human society, war is
acceptable only when it appears on the newspaper or in the TV show, and that is, war is acceptable only when it is presented as the absent in front of the people. So when the veiled war is shown in front of Ian, he is unable to recognize it. In the UK, the modern democratic State, a gun cannot be used normally as a fork. Though Ian carries a gun because he knows well that the state of exception works even when the law is still effective, but he does not expect the state of exception happens at the scale of war, at the scale that no one can run away from, and that is, at the scale of reality.
Soldier . . . I broke a woman’s neck. Stabbed up between her legs, on the fifth stab snapped her spine.
Ian (Looks sick.)
Soldier You couldn’t do that.
Ian No.
Soldier You never killed. (46)
Talking about killing, Ian says, “I wouldn’t forget” (43). The soldier replies, “You would.” Ian still believes that human life is sacred as he still believes in the value of his own life. He never thinks that the human exist only to be killed. So he cannot forget his killing, and cannot kill any others as cruelly as the soldier does. The
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soldier’s extreme cruelty, however, tells the story that human beings can be always killed in spite of human dignity because the State, by being able to suspend the law for its own preservation, is itself “a killing machine” (State of Exception 86). So one’s loss of life is forgettable as breakfast bacon eaten yesterday morning.
Knowing Ian works as a journalist, the soldier asks Ian to send his story out, to let others know that his lover is cruelly slaughtered during war. “Proving it happened.
I’m here, got no choice. But you. You should be telling people” (47). Ian rejects his request, telling him, “This isn’t a story anyone wants to know” (48) because it is not
“personal,” and it supplies no “joy” at all. Like disaster is never regarded personal, under the regulation of law, the state of exception and war are related with everyday life by being considered unrelated to it, so peace is peaceful and human life is inviolable. In “Reviewing the Fabric of Blasted,” Elaine Aston argues, “Kane’s image-infused writing aims to make us see and to feel the affects of violence not as a world outside of ourselves, othered and neutralized, but as inside our lives, value systems, choices and behaviours” (19). The violence happens later in the story would be too extreme for one to ignore. And seeing characters, who are as human as
everyone else, being treated in the most inhuman way, one would be provoked to ask if human life itself is a container welcoming all the cruelty to inhabit in it.
“Going to fuck you.” says the soldier (49). The soldier rapes Ian, and, at the
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same time, the “Soldier is crying his heart out.” After the sex and breakdown, the soldier asks Ian, “Sure you haven’t got any food, I’m fucking starving” (50). Then, he holds Ian head, and “puts his mouth over one of Ian’s eyes, sucks it out, bites it off and eats it. / He does the same to the other eye.” And the soldier breaks down again,
saying “He ate her eyes. / Poor bastard. Poor love. Poor fucking bastard.” One would never be sure if his lover is also raped, and if her eyes are also eaten because later he blows his head off with his rifle. It seems that the only mercy one being homo sacer can perceive is death as Agamben declares, “The very body of homo sacer is . . . a living pledge to his subjection to a power of death” (Homo Sacer 99). Coming back and seeing the dead soldier and Ian lying aside, Cate curses again, “You’re a
nightmare” (51). She carries a crying infant given by a stranger from the war zone.
She witnesses the city is “taken over,” and the people lose their hope. Ian welcomes Cate excitedly, saying, “You come for me, Catie? Punish me or rescue me makes no difference I love you Cate . . . touch me Cate” (51). In his extreme insecurity resulting from his blindness, Ian wants to know if Cate is really beside him, so she can help him by punishing him. He wants Cate to help him to end his life. “Be dead soon anyway, Cate. / And it hurts. / Help me to－ / Help me－ / Finish / It.” begs Ian (53), and he asks Cate to find his gun. Instead of finding Ian’s gun, Cate “takes the revolver from the Soldier,” and takes out all the bullets from it (54). Holding the rifle, Cate
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still refuses to give Ian the weapon for she thinks it is immoral to commit suicide. Ian shouts angrily, “No God. No Father Christmas. No fairies. No Narnia. No fucking nothing” (55), and accuses Cate, “I know you want to punish me, trying to make me live.” Cate denies the accusation. She gives Ian the unloaded rifle after knowing she is unable to persuade him. “He pulls the trigger. The gun clicks, empty” (56). Cate says it is God stopping him to kill himself, and Ian calls God the “cunt” (57). Cate looks down at the baby, and says “It’s dead” (57). So even the symbol of hope fades away.
Cate buries the dead infant, “binds the wood together in a cross which she sticks into the floor” (57), and she prays for the baby for she believes the baby dies
innocently (58). During the praying, Ian asks Cate, “Can’t you forgive me?” (58). But his question is left unanswered, and Cate decides to leave Ian to find some food outside. Left alone within ruin, Ian cannot maintain himself anymore. He masturbates, strangles himself, shits on the floor, laughs insanely, sleeps with bad dream, cries while holding the soldier’s body, and finally he lies “very still, weak with hunger”
(59-60). He pulls out the hand-made cross, digs out the infant’s corpse, eats it and puts his whole body into the tomb hole with only his head shown (60). “He dies with relief.” Rain comes down on dead Ian, and then this dead man resurrects and curses,
“Shit.” Cate comes back from the war zone with some food and drink, and there “is blood seeping from between her legs.” She sees Ian bury himself in the hole, and get
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wet. She calls him, “Stupid bastard,” and sits beside him. She shares what she gets with Ian, and they eat and drink together. “She finishes feeding Ian and sits apart from him, huddle for warmth” (61). In the silence with rain, Ian ends the play by saying,
“Thank you.” The characters seem to reach some kind of reconciliation when the smell of death is still thick.
That most paradoxical, most fleeting hope finally emerges from the semblance of reconciliation, just as, at twilight, as the sun is
extinguished, rises the evening star which outlasts the night. Its glimmer, of course, is imparted by Venus. And upon the slightest such glimmer all hope rests; even the richest hope comes only from it. (“Goethe’s Elective Affinities,” Benjamin 355)
In Goethe’s Elective Affinities, the distance between the lovers is never shortened for them to achieve reconciliation when they are alive because of the restriction of law.
But when they are dead, they finally can wait “side by side” for the “happy moment . . . when one day they awaken again together” (Elective Affinity, Goethe 300). The “richest hope” shines, therefore, only when the light of life withers. Strictly speaking, Cate and Ian never achieve reconciliation between each other as Ian is never forgiven. When Ian asks for Cate’s help to end his suffering, she does not show her mercy but unloads the rifle, and lies to him that God does not want him to die. She
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keeps silent as Ian asks for her forgiveness. And she decides to leave Ian while her companionship for Ian is so vital. Even when Cate comes back and feeds Ian, no emotional intimacy can be found in their interactions. In the end, Cate sits aside from Ian to keep her own warmth. It is not the reconciliation between the perpetrator and victim brings up the hope since forgiveness is never given, and their distance is never shortened. However, when forgiveness is not shown in the end, revenge is not seen as well. When the fact that human beings can only live as homo sacer becomes crystal clear, how can human rights be still considered sacred and inviolable? Cate and Ian both know it well, so one does not forgive nor revenge, and the other does not ask for forgiveness again. Going through all the sufferings, and soaked in the cold rain together, they are forced to acknowledge the fragility of peace by their own bodies.
Then, when they can all cry as Christ, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” (Matthew 27:46) for experiencing the forsakenness of the law, they know what should be hoped. Living as the living dead, Ian and Cate achieve “the semblance of reconciliation” for they both perceive what should be waited for.
Besides the consensus between Ian and Cate, the “semblance of reconciliation”
can also be explained in the other way because it can also refer to an unusual kind of reconciliation happening between the suffering human life and the hoped different life as in Goethe’s story, the life promised in God’s Kingdom awaits the dead. When Ian’s
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life is used to reveal the nakedness of human life as he is alive, by his resurrection, the possibility of different life is shown. Though what Ian does when he is alive all look profane, these profanations he commits against the law make his being forsaken by the law undeniable because as the law does not stop him from being profane, it does not save him from all the outlaw violence as well. Ian rapes Cate, curses God, desires to commit suicide, acts as a crazy man and commits cannibalism in the end, but on the other hand, Ian is also raped, tortured, and even has his eyes eaten for the appearance of war. Though there are no strong grounds to argue that Ian, just like Christ, acts without caring his own rights, it is undeniable that Ian’s whole being is christlike insofar as it is exposed to the threat of the power which is sustained not by its full enforcement, but by its own suspension. The hope of redemption, therefore, must be shown in front of him as well. Ian’s resurrection is designed by Kane as the reminder of something deserving to be waited for. Paul argues that “if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain” (1 Corinthians 15:17), and Ian’s afterlife is also the first note delivering the melody of the life realized in the Kingdom of inoperativity since his afterlife is accompanied with the silence in which his gratitude can be clearly heard and
perceived without being diluted by the violence carried out by the State power and the suspension of law.
When the sovereign power works inpoeratively, it would not point the knife
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named as the righteousness beyond the law at each individual, so the individual would not always under the threat to be killed by the knife, or be forced to take the knife to kill. When the law is rendered inoperative, though the law would not take care of the people by defining their human rights as before, it would not include the people by excluding them from its protection as well. In this case, the law becomes more human than before. At the last moment of the play, when Ian and Cate sit together, when the law and sovereign power seem to bother them no more, Kane ends the play with Ian’s simple gratitude as this simplicity is the answer, is what is always waited for. Ian’s simple gratitude presents an obvious turn of Ian’s attitude. It shows how he changes himself from a man grasping his rights of life tightly but choosing to ignore others’
human rights into a person treating others without sophisticated calculation but with simplicity that presents what he really feels. And this simplicity is achieved by being detached from the sovereign power and law, and by being unrelated to humanity asking the people to revenge or to forgive for the belief in justice. When the law and sovereign power work inoperatively, and when human rights are not being bestowed just for their suspension, the Kingdom quietly arrives between these most exiled beings.
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Chapter Three
“You Were My Death”: Reason, Body and Humanity in Cleansed
You were my death:
you I could hold
when all fell away from me.
——“You Were,” Paul Celan 261.
When I am alive, I know I have to control my body well, so I can live with reason as well as health. I was taught that is how one can live humanly because the undirected body does not only result in inhumanity, but also decease. I am always considering how to move my body correctly in order to make it look human and lively. Consequently, I know my body no more, but only recognizes my body as my death I try to conquer or evade by controlling it as healthily and reasonably as possible.
In the previous chapter, through the analysis of Kane’s Blasted, I discuss that human rights are deprived, not in spite of, but because of the protection of law. And this deprivation results exactly from the people’s pursuit of human rights because this pursuit requires the people unite themselves in the leviathan of State whose
domination on each individual is in turn achieved not by the law’s effective enforcement, but by its suspension. Then, if human life is impossible to be treated
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humanly by the union of people under the State, can the human being lives humanly through his own humanity? Or is it doomed to be disastrous as well? The story of Kane’s Cleansed occurs “inside the perimeter fence of a university” (107), a place staked out for preserving and propagating the idea of human dignity to the world, supposedly. But in Cleansed, no characters are treated in a way that they deserve for the university in the play serves only as a concentration camp. The characters are
humanly by the union of people under the State, can the human being lives humanly through his own humanity? Or is it doomed to be disastrous as well? The story of Kane’s Cleansed occurs “inside the perimeter fence of a university” (107), a place staked out for preserving and propagating the idea of human dignity to the world, supposedly. But in Cleansed, no characters are treated in a way that they deserve for the university in the play serves only as a concentration camp. The characters are