Confessing Evangelical

Interesting (if at times a little wayward) article by Terry Eagleton on The Roots of Terror, in which he argues that terrorism has its roots in the formation of modern states, as seen particularly in the French Revolution ("The Jacobin Terror was not a strike by a secretive cabal of fanatics against the state, but a strike by a secretive cabal of fanatics known as the state").

I was particularly interested in Prof Eagleton's comments on the distinction between dominance and hegemony. His article looks at the work of probably the first person to use the word "terrorist" in English, "Britain’s doughtiest opponent of the [French] revolution, Edmund Burke", who "is usually considered by the left as a crusty old Tory, [but] was in fact a liberal Whig".

While Burke condemned the violence of the Jacobin Terror just as he had condemned British violence in America and Ireland, he "was not opposed to a stiff dose of terror as such":

On the contrary, he was honest enough to admit that the law itself is in a sense terroristic, and in his view it needed to be. Only in this way would it intimidate its subjects into a suitable sense of awe ... [T]error, in his view, was not just a sudden violent irruption into an otherwise peaceful situation – there was a dash of terror about law and order itself.

However, Burke's experience of British brutality in Ireland showed that terror was not enough:

[T]his daunting power of the law had to be softened and tempered if it was to be effective. It had to engage the affections of the people, not just their fear.

This brings Prof Eagleton on to "what Antonio Gramsci was later to call hegemony". The difference between "dominance" (based solely on the exercise of brute power) and "hegemony" (in which broader cultural attitudes and structures mean that the dominant group gains, in effect, the "consent" of those over which it rules) can be seen when one contrasts British rule in Ireland with the situation in Britain itself:

[Burke] believed ... that the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy in his native country had never succeeded in making the transition from a dominant to a hegemonic class. The Irish small farmers tugged their forelocks to them in public, and then waited until night fell so they could go out and smash up their property.

The British ruling class, Burke considered, had developed practices and customs over centuries that bound the affections of their subjects to them ... In Ireland, however, this had lamentably failed to happen. And if you lack hegemony, then you will be forced to use terroristic coercion instead.

Eagleton continues by describing how Burke "looked at all this in gender terms":

The law was masculine, but hegemony was a way of feminising it, making it sweeter and softer. For coercion to do its work, it must drape itself in the alluring dress of a woman. The law for Burke is a cross-dresser. But there is always an ugly bulge in its decorous garments.

In Burke’s eyes, women are beautiful, while men are sublime. And the most potent form of authority is one that combines the two. Like the stereotypical female seducer, the law must lull us into sweet oblivion of its own sublime terror. Like God, it is terrible to look upon with the naked eye; but if we view it through the veils of hegemony, we can find its edicts more to our taste.

Problems come when these "veils of hegemony" are lost and people are exposed to a naked exercise of power over them:

If the law strips off its seductive drapery and exposes the full extent of its unlovely power – if, so to speak, it becomes a flasher rather than a cross-dresser – we will find it repulsive and revolt against it. Terror breaks out when hegemony breaks down.

This is what had happened to the British in Ireland, India and the American colonies, and it is what happened to the French Revolution as the first rush of revolutionary (and "hegemonic") fervour gave way to the brutal "dominance" of the Terror.

And (lurking within Prof Eagleton's reflex Bush-bashing and anti-Americanism) there is a serious warning to the US that pursuing dominance rather than hegemony (a hegemony the US undoubtedly possesses, not least by means of the entertainment industry, leading much of the world to want to "be like America") could lead to a situation in which "your own brute force brings you toppling to the ground".

That may be putting it a bit too strongly - I suspect Prof Eagleton will have to live with American political, economic and cultural power for a while longer yet ;-) - but it's a reminder that mere "dominance" is never enough for a country to remain what 1066 and All That would call "Top Nation".