Orhan Pamuk provides a wonderful description of the magical, tantalizing quality of 'huzun' -- that sorrow-drenched nostalgia peculiar to Istanbul, which expressed both the sublimity of Istanbul's status as the phantasmal gateway between Europe and Asia, the pain of failed Turkish modernizations, and a helpless anger at the decrepitude of the Ottoman Empire, whose multiple and contradictory legacies were and are as indigestible for post-Ataturk Turks as the Romanov legacy was and is for Russians.
The American decline is triggering something similar. Huzun is everywhere these days, from our best television series (David Simon's "The Wire" is Baltimore huzun, and "Treme" is huzun a la Nouvelle-Orléans) to our best videogames (Sony Santa Monica's "God of War" is the huzun-inflected Greek mythology epic). It's even appearing on that last bastion of unfettered neoliberal overlordship, namely broadcast TV, in the form of cooking shows and the appearance of that strange new figure, the professional chef who is the honest, hard-working cultural laborer - the dialectical inversion of blowdried game-show hosts and platitudinous TV pundits.
I felt the educational version of "huzun" today while applying for my food stamp benefits at a local community college. (For those unfamiliar with the hellishness of the US welfare state, food stamps are administered inside "workfare" programs. The benefits are minimal, and you have to document your work-search, never mind the fact that millions of Americans are doing the same thing. Still, they're better than absolutely nothing. The only bright side is that the people who run these programs are personally very kind and helpful. They're just not given adequate resources to truly help people -- serious Federal money for job retraining, education spending, and emergency make-work programs.)
The campus looks beautiful on the outside, but inside, the lack of funding for maintenance and repairs was obviously taking its toll. Scratched paint, dented surfaces, cheap plastic furniture, and constant battles to maintain minimal funding for programs which can make a real difference in people's lives.
It may be too late to reverse course for this empire, which seems bound and determined, like some vast, distorted doppelganger of its Middle Eastern client dictatorships, to commit continental-size economic suicide. But perhaps the developmental states of the world can learn from our mistakes: don't pour your resources into military superweapons or playgrounds for your elites. Put them into basic schooling and community colleges.
Like the great author he is, Pamuk never says so outright, but huzun is really the lingering curse of empire. The glory, wealth and power won through violence revenges itself on later generations, condemning them to centuries of misery and subalternity. Only economic, social and political democracy can exorcise huzun, and the first step is acknowledging the imperial past (still a sore point in contemporary Turkey).
My country, o my country. What have we let Wall Street do to you?
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