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Dead Europe, by Christos Tsiolkas

Sat 3 Sep 2005 In: Books View at NDHA

DEAD EUROPE By Christos Tsiolkas Vintage: 2005. This work will probably ring some new changes on the issues of hate literature and censorship, and its author is an out socialist gay Greek-Australian. I was impressed. Most of the gay characters depicted in this book are anti-Semites and deeply unattractive. Tsiolkas asks his readers to consider what happens when one becomes morally calloused to human suffering, as occurs within US neoconservative strategies of fighting the Iraqi War, Australia's detention camps for refugees and asylum seekers, or, for that matter, denial of the scale and significance of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa and the United States. He does this through using a deliberately archaic mode of anti-Semitism that has been obsolete since World War II for an obvious reason. Put simply, no-one has the alibi that Jews constitute a magical source of subversion within the context of an international conspiracy that unites antidemocratic extremes of left and right. The Holocaust was the hideous culmination of such philosophies and folk nostrums, which Tsiolkas sidesteps through having his characters deny its moral significance. It reminded me of Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream (1972), which did similar things to the genre of heroic fantasy within an alternate history science fiction novel. In Spinrad's alternate universe, the KPD took over Germany in the thirties, and Adolf Hitler emigrated to the United States, where he became a pulp SF author and illustrator. The Iron Dream contains Lord of the Swastika, a purported heroic fantasy world set after a nuclear war has caused widespread human mutations. Heldon, an advanced industrial society, falls under the influence of Feric Jaggar, a blue-eyed blond 'pure human' who takes over Heldon and turns it into a fantasy equivalent of Nazi Germany in our own world. Or Brett Easton Ellis' American Psycho (1990), in which a yuppie misogynist serial killer disembowels women while prattling on about brand names. Spinrad isn't an anti-Semite and Ellis isn't a misogynist. Both of them set out to write morality tales, and both of them succeeded through the use of transgressive genres, settings and characters. Why do novels like Iron Dream, American Psycho and Dead Europe scare the shit out of us? Primarily, it's due to the psychosomatic origins of horror in early childhood development. According to French philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva, nauseated horrified responses at human wastes and human remains result from the need of human infants to differentiate themselves from the powerful presence of the maternal body in their lives. They form their own identities through developing nauseated responses to bodily fluids, secretions and wastes. Kristeva labels this process as 'abjection.' How does it apply to this work? Tsiolkas sets out to parody the processes of abjection that led to transferal of the rejection of bodily wastes, secretions and fluids onto Jews within medieval anti-Semitic Christian myth. How is this relevant to LGBT audiences? Paul Cameron uses identical techniques to depict lesbians and gay men within his junk science, which enjoys wide circulation within the US and New Zealand Christian Right, and seeks to evoke a nauseated response amongst gullible homophobes. In writing this work, Tsiolkas contributes a useful reminder of the way that stigmatisation and exclusion provoke dehumanisation and violence. He has done debates about hate literature and censorship a great service through producing this work. Recommended Reading: Brett Easton Ellis: American Psycho: Picador: London: 1990. Julia Kristeva: Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection: New York: Columbia University Press: 1986. Norman Spinrad: The Iron Dream: London: Sphere: 1975. Christos Tsiolkas: Dead Europe: Milsons Point: Vintage: 2005. Craig Young (politics columnist) - 3rd September 2005    

Credit: Craig Young (politics columnist)

First published: Saturday, 3rd September 2005 - 12:00pm

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