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diff --git a/data/pages/en/article/1998-conspiracy/Illich, Ivan - 1998 Illich-Conspiracy.md b/data/pages/en/article/1998-conspiracy/Illich, Ivan - 1998 Illich-Conspiracy.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5764985 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/pages/en/article/1998-conspiracy/Illich, Ivan - 1998 Illich-Conspiracy.md @@ -0,0 +1,472 @@ +Ivan Illich +Kreftingstr. 16 +D - 28203 Bremen + + + + + + + +**The Cultivation of Conspiracy ** + +A translated, edited and expanded version +of an address given by Ivan Illich at the Villa Ichon in Bremen, Germany, +on the occasion of receiving the Culture and Peace Prize of Bremen, March 14, 1998. + + + + + + + + + + + +_Printed:_ 23.06.00 +_Filename and date:_ ICHON-IB.DOC +_Old filename and date_ : Ichon-ib.c22 + + + + +_STATUS:_ +1. _Distribution_ +- no limits + +2. _Copyright_ +- To be published in: Lee Hoinacki and Carl Mitcham, eds., Ivan Illich: What’s He +Said Rowman and Littlefield, 1999. Title and date tentative. + + + + +For further information please contact: +Silja Samerski Kreftingstr.16 D - 28203 Bremen +Tel: +49-(0)421-76332 Fax: +49-(0)421-705387 e-mail: piano@uni-bremen.de + + +* * * + +_Ivan Illich: The Cultivation of Conspiracy_ +2 + + +**THE CULTIVATION OF CONSPIRACY ** + +A translated, edited and expanded version of an address given by Ivan Illich at the Villa Ichon +in Bremen, Germany, on the occasion of receiving the Culture and Peace Prize of Bremen, +March 14, 1998. + + +On November 16, 1996, I arrived at the library auditorium of Bremen University just in time +for my afternoon lecture. For five years now I had commented old texts to trace the long history of +western philia, of friendship. This semester's theme was the loss of the common sense for +proportionality during the lifetimes of Locke, Leibniz and Johann Sebastian Bach. On that day I +wanted to address "common sense" as the sense-organ believed to recognize "the good", the "fit" and +the "fifth". But even before I could start I had to stop: the roughly two hundred auditors had planned +a party instead of a lecture. Two months after the actual day, they had decided to celebrate my +seventieth birthday, so we feasted and laughed and danced until midnight. + +Speeches launched the affair. I was seated behind a bouquet, in the first row, and listened to +seventeen talks. As a sign of recognition, I presented a flower to each encomiast. Most speakers +were over fifty, friends I had made on four continents, a few with reminiscences reaching back to the +1950s in New York. Others were acquaintances made while teaching in Kassel, Berlin, Marburg, +Oldenburg and, since 1991, in Bremen. As I grappled for the expression of gratitude fitting each +speaker, I felt like Hugh of St. Victor, my teacher. This twelfth-century monk in a letter compares +himself to a basket-bearing donkey: not weighed down but lifted by the burden of friendships +gathered on life's pilgrimage. + +From the laudationes at the library we moved across the plaza to the liberal arts building, +whose bleak cement hallways I habitually avoid. A metamorphosis had occurred in its atmosphere. +We found ourselves in a quaint café: some five dozen small tables, each with a lighted candle on a +colored napkin. For the occasion, the university's department of domestic science had squeezed a pot +into the semester's budget, a pot large enough to cook potato soup for a company. The chancellor, +absent on business in Beijing, had hired a Klezmer ensemble. Ludolf Kuchenbuch, dean of +historians at a nearby university and a saxophonist, took charge of the jazz. A couple of clowns +performing on a bicycle entertained us with their parody of my 1972 book, Energy and Equity. + +The mayor-governor of the city state, Bremen, had picked a very old Burgundy from the +treasures of the Ratskeller. The lanky and towering official handed me the precious gift and +expressed his pleasure "that Illich at seventy, in his own words, had found in Bremen 'einen Zipfel +Heimat'," something like "the tail end of an abode." On the lips of the Bürgermeister, my expression + + +* * * + +_Ivan Illich: The Cultivation of Conspiracy_ +3 +seemed grotesque, but still true. I began to reflect: How could I have been induced to connect the +notion of home with the long dark winters of continual rain, where I walk through the pastures along +the Wümme that are flooded twice a day by the tide from the North Atlantic? I who, as a boy, had +felt exiled in Vienna, because all my senses were longingly attached to the South, to the blue +Adriatic, to the limestone mountains in the Dalmatia of my early childhood. + +Today's ceremony, however, is even more startling than last year's revelry, because your award +makes me feel welcomed by the citizenry rather than just by a city father. Villa Ichon is a +manifestation of Bremen's civility: neither private charity nor public agency. You, who are my hosts +in this place, define yourselves as Hanseatic merchant citizens. On the day Villa Ichon was solemnly +opened, you pointedly refused to let a city official touch the keys to this house, this "houseboat for +the uninsured and vulnerable among us" as Klaus Hübotter has called it. By insisting on your +autonomy you stressed the respectful distance of civil society from the city's government. I am +touched that this annual award, meant to honor a Bremen citizen, should today go to an errant +pilgrim, but to one who knows how to appreciate it. As the eldest son of a merchant family in a free +port city - one that was caught between the contesting powers of Byzantium and Venice - I was born +into a tradition which, in the meantime, has petered out, but not without leaving me sensitive to the +flavor of the Hanseatic hospitality you offer today. + +I first heard of Bremen when I was six, in the stories told me by my drawing teacher, who came +from one of your patrician families, and in Vienna was homesick for the North. I adopted the tiny, +black-dressed lady as Mamma Pfeiffer-Kulenkampf. One summer she came along with us to +Dalmatia, to paint. Her watercolors still grace my brothers study. From her I learned how to mix +different pigments for the contrasting atmospheres of a Mediterranean and an Atlantic shore. + +Now, a long lifetime later, I am at home in her salty gray climate. And not just at home: I now +fancy that my presence has added something to the atmosphere of Bremen university. When Dean +Johannes Beck led me from the aula through the rainy plaza into the makeshift cafe he made a +remark that I accepted as a gift. "Ivan," he said "this feels like an overflow of Barbara Duden's +house." Dean Beck put into words the accomplishment of something I had aimed at for decades \-- +the plethora of the dining-room conviviality inspiring the University Aula; The aura of our +hospitality in the Kreftingstrasse, felt well beyond its threshold. + +Even before my first Bremen semester could start, Barbara Duden got a house in the Ostertor +Viertel, beyond the old moat, just down from the drug-corner, the farmers market and the Turkish +quarter. There Barbara created an ambiance of austere playfulness. The house became a place that +at the drop of a hat accommodates our guests. If \-- after my lecture on Fridays \-- the spaghetti bowl +must feed more than the two dozen who fit around the table made from flooring timber, guests squat +on Mexican blankets in the next room. + + + +* * * + +_Ivan Illich: The Cultivation of Conspiracy_ +4 +Over the years our "Kreftingstraße" has fostered privileged closeness in respectful, disciplined, +critical intercourse: friendships between old acquaintances who drop in from far away, and new +ones, three, even four decades younger than my oldest companion Ceslaus Hoinacki, who shares his +room with our Encyclopedias. Friendship makes ties unique, but some more than others bear the +burden of the host. Kassandra who lives elsewhere, has a key to the house and brings the flowers +and Matthias, the virtuoso drummer who stays downstairs, in the room that opens on the tiny +garden, belong to the dozen who can equally welcome the newcomer at the threshold, stir the soup, +orient conversation, do the dishes and ... correct my manuscripts as well as those of each other. + +Learned and leisurely hospitality is the only antidote to the stance of deadly cleverness that is +acquired in the professional pursuit of objectively secured knowledge. I remain certain that the quest +for truth cannot thrive outside the nourishment of mutual trust flowering into a commitment to +friendship. Therefore I have tried to identify the climate that fosters and the "conditioned air" that +hinders the growth of friendship. + +Of course I can remember the taste of strong atmospheres from other epochs in my life: I have +never doubted that \-- today, more than ever \-- a "monastic" ambience is the prerequisite to the +independence needed for a historically based indictment of society. Only the gratuitous commitment +of friends can enable me to practice the ascetisme required for modern near-paradoxes: as that of +renouncing systems analysis while typing on my Toshiba. + +My early suspicion that atmosphere was a prerequisite for the kind of studium to which I had +dedicated myself became a conviction through my contact with post-Sputnik American universities. +After just one year as vice-chancellor of a university in Puerto Rico, in 1957 I and a few others +wanted to question the development ideology to which Kennedy no less than Castro subscribed. I put +all the money I had - today the equivalent of the prize you just gave me - into the purchase of a one- +room wooden shack in the mountains that overlook the Caribbean. With three friends I wanted a +place of study in which every use of the personal pronoun "nos-otros" would truthfully refer back to +the four of "us", and be accessible to our guests as well; I wanted to practice the rigor that would +keep us far from the "we" that invokes the security found in the shadow of an academic discipline: +we as "sociologists", "economists" and so forth. As one of us, Charlie Rosario, put it: "All +departments smell - of disinfectants, at their best; and poisoned sterilized aura." The "casita" on the +route to Adjuntas soon became so obnoxious that I had to leave the Island. + +This freed me to start a "thinkery" in Mexico that five years later turned into CIDOC. In his +introductory talk for today's celebration congressman Freimut Duve told you about it. In those +distant years Duve was editor at Rowohlt, took care of my German books and several times spent +time with me there, in Cuernavaca. He told you about the spirit prevailing in that place: a climate of +mutually tempered forbearance. It was this aura, this quality or air, through which this ephemeral +venture could become a world crossroads, a meeting place for those who, long before this had + + +* * * + +_Ivan Illich: The Cultivation of Conspiracy_ +5 +become fashionable, questioned the innocence of "development." Only the mood that Duve hinted at +can explain the disproportionate influence that this small place exerted in challenging the goods of +socio-economic development. + +CIDOC was closed by common accord on April first, ten years to the day after its foundation. +With Mexican music and dancing we celebrated its closing. Duve told you about her, who did it, +Valentina Borremans: she had directed and organized CIDOC from its inception, and he told you +about his admiration for the style in which she closed it by mutual consent of its 63 collaborators. +She knew that the soul of this free, independent and powerless "thinkery" would have been squashed +soon by its rising influence. + +CIDOC shut its doors in the face of criticism by its most serious friends, people too earnest to +grasp the paradox of atmosphere. These were mainly persons for whom the hospitable atmosphere +of CIDOC had provided a unique forum. They thrived in the aura of CIDOC, and outright rejected +our certainty that atmosphere invites institutionalization by which it will be corrupted. You never +know what will nurture the spirit of a philia, while you can be certain what will stifle it. Spirit +emerges by surprise, and it's a miracle when it abides; it is stifled by every attempt to secure it; it's +debauched when you try to use it. + +Few understood this. With Valentina I opened the mayor's bottle of Burgundy in Mexico to +celebrate one of them. We drank the wine to the memory of Alejandro Del Corro, a now deceased +Argentine Jesuit who lived and worked with me since the early sixties. With his Laica he traveled +around South America, collaborating with guerrilleros to save their archives for history. Alejandro +was a master at moderating aura. Wen he presided, his delicate attention to each guest: guerrillero, +US civil servant, trash collector or professor felt at home with each other around the CIDOC table. +Alejandro knew that you cannot lay a claim on aura, he knew about the evanescence of atmosphere. + +I speak of atmosphere, faute de mieux. In Greek, the word is used for the emanation of a star, +or for the constellation that governs a place; alchemists adopted it to speak of the layers around our +planet. Maurice Blondel reflects its much later French usage for bouquet des ésprits, the scent those +present contribute to a meeting. I use the word for something frail and often discounted, the air that +weaves and wafts and evokes memories, like those attached to the Burgundy long after the bottle has +been emptied. + +To sense an aura, you need a nose. The nose, framed by the eyes, runs below the brain. What +the nose inhales ends in the guts; every yogi and hesichast knows this. The nose curves down in the +middle of the face. Pious Jews are conscious of the image because what Christians call "walking in +the sight of God" the Hebrew expresses as "ambling under God's nose and breath." To savor the feel +of a place, you trust your nose; to trust another, you must first smell him. + + + +* * * + +_Ivan Illich: The Cultivation of Conspiracy_ +6 +In its beginnings, western civic culture wavered between cultivated distrust and sympathetic +trust. Plato believed it would be upsetting for Athenian citizens to allow their bowels to be affected +by the passion of actors in the theater; he wanted the audience to go no further than reflecting on the +words. Aristotle respectfully modified his teacher's opinion. In the Poetics, he asks the spectators to +let gesture and mimicry, the rhythm and melody of breath, reach their very innards. Citizens should +attend the theater, not just to understand, but to be affected by each other. For Aristotle, there could +be no transformation, no purifying catharsis, without such gripping mimesis. Without gut level +experience of the other, without sharing his aura, you can't be saved from yourself. + +Some of that sense of mimesis comes out in an old German adage, "Ich kann Dich gut riechen" +(I can smell you well), which is still used and understood. But it's something you don't say to just +anyone; it's an expression that is permissible only when you feel close, count on trust, and are +willing to be hurt. It presupposes the truth of another German saying, "Ich kann Dich gut leiden" (I +can suffer [put up with] you [well]). You can see that nose words have not altogether disappeared +from ordinary speech, even in the age of daily showers. + +I remember my embarrassment when, after years of ascetical discipline, I realized that I still +had not made the connection between nose and heart, smell and affection. I was in Peru in the mid- +fifties, on my way to meet Jaime, who welcomed me to his modest hut for the third time. But to get +to the shack, I had to cross the Rimac, the open cloaca of Lima. The thought of sleeping for a week +in this miasma almost made me retch. That evening, for some reason I suddenly understood with a +shock what Carlos had been telling me all along, "Ivan, don't kid yourself; don't imagine you can be +friends with people you can't smell." That one jolt unplugged my nose; it enabled me to dip into the +aura of Carlos's house, and allowed me to merge the atmosphere I brought along into the ambience +of his home. + +This discovery of my nose for the scent of the spirit occurred forty years ago, in the time of the +DC-4, belief in development programs, and the apparently benign Peace Corps. It was the time +when DDT was still too expensive for Latin American slum dwellers, when most people had to put +up with fleas and lice on their skins, as they put up with the old, the crippled and idiots in their +homes. It was the time before Xerox, fax and e-mail. But it was also a time before smog and AIDS. +I was then considered a crank because I foresaw the unwanted side effects of development, because I +spoke to unions on technogenic unemployment, and to leftists on the growing polarization between +rich and poor in the wake of expanding commodity dependence. What seemed hysteria then has now +hardened into well documented facts; some of these facts are too horrible to face. They must be +exorcised: bowdlerizing them by research, assigning their management to specialized agencies, and +conjuring them by prevention programs. But while the depletion of life forms, the growing immunity +of pathogens, climate changes, the disappearance of the job culture, and uncontrollable violence now +make up the admitted side effects of economic growth, the menace of modern life for the survival of +atmospheres is hardly recognized as a terrible threat. + + +* * * + +_Ivan Illich: The Cultivation of Conspiracy_ +7 + +This is the reason I dare to annoy you with the memory of that walk in the dusk with my nose +full of the urine and feces emanating from the Rimac. That landscape no longer exists; cars +now fill a highway hiding the sewage. The skin and scalp of Indians is no longer the habitat of lice; +now the allergies produced by industrial chemicals cause the itch. Makeshift shanties have been +replaced by public housing; each apartment has its plumbing and each family member a separate +bed - the guest knows that he imposes an inconvenience. The miasma of the Rimac has become a +memory in a city asfixiated by industrial smog. I juxtapose then and now because this allows me to +argue that the impending loss of spirit, of soul, of what I call atmosphere, could go unnoticed. + +Only persons who face one another in trust can allow its emergence. The bouquet of friendship +varies with each breath, but when it is there it needs no name. For a long time I believed that there +was no one noun for it, and no verb for its creation. Each time I tried one, I was discouraged; all the +synonyms for it were shanghaied by its synthetic counterfeits: mass-produced fashions and cleverly +marketed moods, chic feelings, swank highs and trendy tastes. Starting in the seventies, group +dynamics retreats and psychic training, all to generate "atmosphere," became major businesses. +Discreet silence about the issue I am raising seemed preferable to creating a misunderstanding. + +Then, thirty years after that evening above the Rimac, I suddenly realized that there is indeed a +very simple word that says what I cherished and tried to nourish, and that word is peace. Peace, +however, not in any of the many ways its cognates are used all over the world, but peace in its post- +classical, European meaning. Peace, in this sense, is the one strong word with which the atmosphere +of friendship created among equals has been appropriately named. But to embrace this, one has to +come to understand the origin of this peace in the conspiratio, a curious ritual behavior almost +forgotten today. + +This is how I chanced upon this insight. In 1986, a few dozen peace research centers in Africa +and Asia were planning to open a common resource center. The founding assembly was held in +Japan, and the leaders were looking for a Third World speaker. However, for reasons of delicacy, +they wanted a person who was neither Asian nor African, and took me for a Latin American; then +they pressured me to come. So I packed my guayabera shirt and departed for the Orient. + +In Yokohama I addressed the group, speaking as a historian. I wanted first to dismantle any +universal notion of peace; I wanted to stress the claim of each ethnos to its own peace, the right of +each community to be left in its peace. It seemed important to make clear that peace is not an +abstract condition, but a very specific spirit to be relished in its particular, incommunicable +uniqueness by each community. + +However, my aim in Yokohama was twofold: I wanted to examine not only the meaning but +also the history and perversion of peace in that appendix to Asia and Africa we call Europe. After + + +* * * + +_Ivan Illich: The Cultivation of Conspiracy_ +8 +all, most of the world in the twentieth century is suffering from the enthusiastic acceptance of +European ideas, including the European concept of peace. The assembly in Japan gave me a chance +to contrast the unique spirit of peace that was born in Christian Europe with its perversion and +counterfeit when, in international political parlance, an ideological link is created between economic +development and peace. I argued that only by de-linking pax (peace) from development could the +heretofore unsuspected glory hidden in pax be revealed. But to achieve this before a Japanese +audience was difficult. + +The Japanese have an iconogram that stands for something we do not have or say or feel: +foodó. My teacher, Professor Tamanoy, explained foodó to me as, "the inimitable freshness that +arises from the commingling of a particular soil with the appropriate waters." Trusting my learned +pacifist guide, since deceased, I started from the notion of foodó. It was easy to explain that both +Athenian philia and Pax Romana, as different as they are from each other, are incomparable to +foodó. Athenian philia bespeaks the friendship among the free men of a city, and Roman pax +bespeaks the administrative status of a region dominated by the Legion that had planted its insignia +into that soil. Thanks to Professor Tamanoy's assistance, it was easy to elaborate on the +contradictions and differences between these two notions, and get the audience to comment on +similar heteronomies in the cultural meaning of peace within India or between neighboring groups in +Tanzania. The kaleidoscopic incarnations of peace all referred to a particular, highly desirable +atmosphere. So far the conversation was easy. + +However, speaking about pax in the proto-Christan epoch turned out to be a delicate matter, +because around the year 300 pax became a key word in the Christian liturgy. It became the +euphemism for a mouth-to-mouth kiss among the faithful attending services; pax became the +camouflage for the osculum (from os, mouth), or the conspiratio, a commingling of breaths. My +friend felt I was not just courting misunderstanding, but perhaps giving offense, by mentioning such +body-to-body contact in public. The gesture, up to this day, is repugnant to Japanese. + +The Latin osculum is neither very old nor frequent. It is one of three words that can be +translated by the English, "kiss." In comparison with the affectionate basium and the lascivious +suavium, osculum was a latecomer into classical Latin, and was used in only one circumstance as a +ritual gesture: In the second century, it became the sign given by a departing soldier to a woman, +thereby recognizing her expected child as his offspring. + +In the Christian liturgy of the first century, the osculum assumed a new function. It became one +of two high points in the celebration of the Eucharist. Conspiratio, the mount-to-mouth kiss, became +the solemn liturgical gesture by which participants in the cult-action shared their breath or spirit +with one another. It came to signify their union in one Holy Spirit, the community that takes shape +in God's breath. The ecclesia came to be through a public ritual action, the liturgy, and the soul of +this liturgy was the conspiratio. Explicitly, corporeally, the central Christian celebration was + + +* * * + +_Ivan Illich: The Cultivation of Conspiracy_ +9 +understood as a co-breathing, a con-spiracy, the bringing about of a common atmosphere, a divine +milieu. + +The other eminent moment of the celebration was, of course, the comestio, the communion in +the flesh, the incorporation of the believer in the body of the Incarnate Word, but communio was +theologically linked to the preceding con-spiratio. Conspiratio became the strongest, clearest and +most unambiguously somatic expression for the entirely non-hierarchical creation of a fraternal +spirit in preparation for the unifying meal. Through the act of eating, the fellow conspirators were +transformed into a "we," a gathering which in Greek means ecclesia. Further, they believed that the +"we" is also somebody's "I"; they were nourished by shading into the "I" of the Incarnate Word. The +words and actions of the liturgy are not just mundane words and actions, but events occurring after +the Word, that is, after the Incarnation. Peace as the commingling of soil and waters sounds cute to +my ears; but peace as the result of conspiratio exacts a demanding, today almost unimaginable +intimacy. + +The practice of the osculum did not go unchallenged; documents reveal that the conspiratio +created scandal early on. The rigorist African Church Father, Tertullian, felt that a decent matron +should not be subjected to possible embarrassment by this rite. The practice continued, but not its +name; the ceremony required a euphemism. From the later third century on, the osculum pacis was +referred to simply as pax, and the gesture was often watered down to some slight touch to signify +the mutual spiritual union of the persons present through the creation of a fraternal atmosphere. +Today, the pax before communion, called "the kiss of peace," is still integral to the Roman, +Slavonic, Greek and Syrian Mass, although it is often reduced to a perfunctory handshake. + +I could no more avoid telling the story in Yokohama than today in Bremen. Why? Because the +very idea of peace understood as a hospitality that reaches out to the stranger, and of a free +assembly that arises in the practice of hospitality cannot be understood without reference to the +Christian liturgy in which the community comes into being by the mouth-to-mouth kiss. + +However, jusyt as the antecedents of peace among us cannot be understood without reference to +conspiration, the historical uniqueness of a city's climate, atmosphere or spirit calls for this +reference. The European idea of peace that is synonymous with the somatic incorporation of equals +into a community has no analogue elsewhere. Community in our European tradition is not the +outcome of an act of authoritative foundation, nor a gift from nature or its gods, nor the result of +management, planning and design, but the consequence of a conspiracy, a deliberate, mutual, +somatic and gratuitous gift to each other. The prototype of that conspiracy lies in the celebration of +the early Christian liturgy in which, no matter their origin, men and women, Greeks and Jews, slaves +and citizens, engender a physical reality that transcends them. The shared breath, the con-spiratio +are the "peace" understood as the community that arises from it. + + + +* * * + +_Ivan Illich: The Cultivation of Conspiracy_ +10 +Historians have often pointed out that the idea of a social contract, which dominates political +thinking in Europe since the 14th century, has its concrete origins in the way founders of medieval +towns conceived urbane civilities. I fully agree with this. However, by focusing on the contractual +aspect of this incorporation attention is distracted from the good that such contracts were meant to +protect, namely, peace resulting from a conspiratio. One can fail to perceive the pretentious +absurdity of attempting a contractual insurance of an atmosphere as fleeting and alive, as tender and +robust, as pax. + +The medieval merchants and craftsmen who settled at the foot of a lord's castle felt the need to +make the conspiracy that united them into a secure and lasting association. To provide for their +general surety, they had recourse to a device, the conjuratio, a mutual promise confirmed by an oath +that uses God as a witness. Most societies know the oath, but the use of God's name to make it stick +first appears as a legal device in the codification of roman law made by the Christian emperor +Theodosius. "Conjuration" or the swearing together by a common oath confirmed by the invocation +of God, just like the liturgical osculum is of Christian origin. Conjuratio which uses God as epoxy +for the social bond presumably assures stability and durability to the atmosphere engendered by the +conspiratio of the citizens. In this linkage between conspiratio and conjuratio, two equally unique +concepts inherited from the first millennium of Christian history are intertwined, but the latter, the +contractual form soon overshadowed the spiritual substance. + +The medieval town of central Europe thus was indeed a profoundly new historical gestalt: the +conjuratio conspirativa, which makes European urbanity distinct from urban modes elsewhere. It +implies a peculiar dynamic strain between the atmosphere of conspiratio and its legal, contractual +constitution. Ideally, the spiritual climate is the source of the city's life that flower into a hierarchy, +like a shell or frame, to protect its order. Insofar as the city is understood to originate in a +conspiratio, it owes its social existence to the pax the breath, shared equally among all. + +This long reflection on the historical precedence to the cultivation of atmosphere in late +twentieth century Bremen seemed necessary to me to defend its intrinsically conspiratorial nature. It +seems necessary to understand why, arguably, independent criticism of the established order of +modern, technogene, information-centered society can grow only out of a milieu of intense +hospitality. + +As a scholar I have been shaped by a monastic traditions and by the interpretation of medieval +texts. Early on I took it for granted that the principal condition for an atmosphere that is propitious +to independent thought is the hospitality cultivated by the host: a hospitality that excludes +condescension as scrupulously as seduction; a hospitality that by its simplicity defeats the fear of +plagiarism as much as that of clientage; a hospitality that by its openness dissolves intimidation as +studiously as servility; a hospitality that exacts from the guests as much generosity as it imposes on +the host. I have been blessed with a large portion of it, with the taste of a relaxed, humorous, + + +* * * + +_Ivan Illich: The Cultivation of Conspiracy_ +11 +sometimes grotesque fit among mostly ordinary but sometimes outlandish companions who are +patient with one another. More so in Bremen than anywhere else. + + +* * * |