On the morning of 11th March 2004, as people travelling to work in Madrid dozed or dreamed or planned the day, three commuter trains were ripped apart by bombs. 11th March was also the day on which Wole Soyinka's second Reith Lecture, Power and Freedom, was recorded. The attack was horrifying proof, if any was needed, of the currency and imperative nature of his lecture series, Climate of Fear.

Soyinka argues that the unknown menace is more terrifying than the threat we can identify, suggesting that the shadowy forces setting themselves up as 'quasi-states' are producing today's climate of fear. These quasi-states are not marked by clear boundaries. Their members may be anywhere: as close as our own shadows; fluid, creeping and seeping. They attack when we are at our most unprepared: living our everyday lives.

In his paper on 'The "Uncanny"' Sigmund Freud addresses the circumstances in which "the familiar can become uncanny and frightening." Using Hoffman's tale 'The Sand-Man' for illustration, he claims that "the feeling of something uncanny is directly attached... to the idea of being robbed of one's eyes." In Hoffman's story a character describes the Sand-Man as "a wicked man who comes when children won't go to bed, and throws handfuls of sand in their eyes so that they jump out of their heads all bleeding." Freud argues that "study of dreams, phantasies and myths has taught us that anxiety about one's eyes, the fear of going blind, is often enough a substitute for the dread of being castrated." We can read castration literally as emasculation, or symbolically as suggesting any loss of power or self-regard. The connection suggested by Freud between loss-of-sight and powerlessness has resonance for Soyinka's comments on shadowy 'quasi-states'. Significantly, an ambulance driver working to rescue victims commented, "I was struck by one thing - the panic in their eyes": eyes that could see the carnage all around, but not the people who caused it. ETA? Al-Qaeda? Both in collaboration? In the immediate aftermath, there was no definitive answer. The lack of an identifiable and locatable source means that dialogue, the rigorous pursuit of which Soyinka believes to be the only solution to what he describes as 'a competitive lust in bestiality', is impossible.

    next > Page 1 of 3

Content last updated: 07/07/2004

About the author

Lynda Morgan completed her Ph.D thesis on South African settler fiction at the School of Oriental and African Studies (the University of London), and her main literary interests continue to be in African literature and colonial/postcolonial studies. She publishes papers in these areas, and regularly contributes to national and international conferences. In August she will deliver a paper on South African and Australian settler fiction at the ICLA Congress in Hong Kong. She is also a published poet.

Comments