Origins: Chapter 2

In the first chapter of this series of texts on the grand sweep of History and that of my son, Raphaël — "The Time of the South, the Time of the North" — the subject was the difference between the countries of the South, where History is still on the march, and those of the North which, according to Fukuyama, are living through "the end of History."

But in its conclusion, the text returned to an intuition of the poet Etel Adnan, according to whom Lebanon — where the past resurfaces permanently in the present — is becoming "the prototype" of the world of tomorrow.

Of course, this relationship to time may seem counter-intuitive to defenders of the historiographical tradition according to which History has a direction. A tradition that finds its origin in the biblical history of David, as related in the Books of Samuel, and which has since been taken up by the many philosophies of History that proliferated in the nineteenth century.

But anyone with an interest in historiography knows that, alongside this vision, there exists another tradition in which historical time is described as cyclical. This was the case with the precursor of the philosophy of History, Ibn Khaldun, in his Book of Lessons published in the fourteenth century, and, in the twentieth century, with the great philosopher of the Frankfurt School, Walter Benjamin, who defended a vision of History in which fragments of the past can surge into the present.

And anyone who follows current events knows that today, on a global scale, we are witnessing the return of many such fragments.

1 – What historical era are we reliving?

One of the most frequently evoked returns, particularly in the West, is of course that of the 1930s of the last century, when Europe was contaminated by fascism.

With the raised arms of certain American politicians, the demonisation of the far left, and a definite rise in antisemitism accompanied by hate speech targeting Muslims, one can readily understand why this analogy recurs so often in public debate.

Even though I subscribe to this reading, for my part I have the impression that we are witnessing above all the return of a more distant era — one that goes back to the sixteenth century, when, after the discovery of the Americas, Europe began to produce a discourse on its own civilisational superiority.

One of the founding episodes of this turning point was the Valladolid Controversy, where, in 1551, theologians and jurists debated the nature of the Amerindian peoples in order to determine whether they were the legitimate owners of their lands or whether, according to Aristotle's criteria, they could be identified as "natural slaves."

Even though this debate "officially" concluded with a recognition of the humanity of the Amerindians, this discourse subsequently only grew stronger, culminating in the nineteenth century with theories on race and discourses on the civilising mission, so as to justify an imperial logic and the expansion of colonial territories.

2 – The return of the discourse on civilisational superiority

If it is precisely this language that seems to me to be resurfacing today, it is first of all because Netanyahu uses it to sell his many massacres in the Middle East as a "clash of civilisations," presenting his country as the one defending the values of the Judeo-Christian West.

But when one sees the many acts of desecration committed by the Israeli army against Christian religious symbols — as is the case in Lebanon — one is justified in relativising the clash of civilisations theory. For this reason, more than Samuel Huntington's theory, it seems more accurate to speak of a return of the civilisational discourse.

A discourse that also appeared recently from the lips of Marco Rubio at a conference where he referred to the era of Christopher Columbus and the conquistadors as a symbolic period of Western greatness.

Delivered before an audience of European leaders, the aim of this conference was to invite them to ally themselves with the United States in order to reconnect with that past which, as we know, was above all made up of territorial expansion, the subjugation of peoples, and the erasure of civilisations.

Of course, as a Lebanese person, I cannot but be alarmed to hear a minister of the world's foremost power referring with pride to this historical era. But what is even more alarming is that recourse to this "archaic" discourse is also being made by the pioneers of future technologies.

3 – Accelerationism

Such is the case, for example, of Alex Karp, the controversial head of Palantir, who, in his manifesto for "the future of the West," recently published on X, makes explicit reference to discourses on civilisational superiority: "Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive."

And when one considers that Palantir sells surveillance software to the CIA and to Israel, and that he makes no secret of his admiration for Netanyahu's policies, there is reason to worry for the inhabitants of the Middle East — and, I believe, for the world at large.

In any case, it is a strange irony that Alex Karp should have wished to write a doctoral thesis in Frankfurt in order to associate his name with that philosophical tradition. A strange irony, because if that school was once the home of luminous thought — such as Walter Benjamin's concept of the "aura" — it now finds itself associated with an entrepreneur close to a current of thought, the "Dark Enlightenment," that seeks to accelerate the advent of a new civilisation freed from the slowness of democracy and governed by the efficiency of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence.

All of this gives the impression that it is as if the debate initiated in the sixteenth century were returning, but with a civilisational hierarchy based on the mastery of algorithms and artificial intelligence, and that the question once posed at the Valladolid Controversy — on the humanity of the Amerindians — is now mutating into the question of what use humans will be in such a civilisation.

What is to be done in the face of the probable arrival of this civilisation? I do not know, but chance had it that at the moment of the publication of Alex Karp's manifesto, I was discovering at the cinema a film whose action unfolds in the sixteenth century: Magellan, by the Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz.

4 – “Magellan” and the Ghosts

A pictorially splendid film which, as its title suggests, traces the journey of this Portuguese navigator who, in the sixteenth century, completed the first circumnavigation of the globe, and who, upon reaching the Philippine islands, encountered the resistance of "indigenous" chiefs who, out of fidelity to their ancestral culture, refused forced Christianisation.

Despite some factual errors, what is striking about this film is not only its resonance with current events, but also its way of depicting every character as an anti-hero. No glorification of anyone whatsoever — only exhausted, vulnerable, and viscous bodies.

To put it another way, this is far removed from the Hollywood biopic aimed at glorifying a historical figure, and further still from the very enthusiastic description that Marco Rubio gave of that era in his speech.

And where this anti-heroic approach hits its mark is that it condemns no one in particular, but reveals how a system — in this case colonialism — enslaves everyone without distinction between colonised and colonisers, and casts them all into violence.

And one can well sense how, in the future, even those who today sell us the civilisation of "techno-colonialism" with broad smiles will themselves be enslaved by the technology they are championing.

But so as not to end on a sombre note, I will evoke the end of the film, which relates the Battle of Mactan, where Magellan was killed by warriors led by Lapu-Lapu. This victory made Lapu-Lapu a legendary figure in the Philippines, where a city bears his name today.

But by choosing to depict Lapu-Lapu as a spectral figure, Lav Diaz lends credence to the thesis that this character may never have existed — perhaps his way of saying that the victories of supposedly superior civilisations will never be definitive, since they will be haunted by the spectre of those they tried to subjugate.

And it is of this importance of spectres that the next chapter will speak.