Bitter Carnival: Ressentiment and the Abject Hero

by Michael André Bernstein

"You people put importance on your lives. Well, my life has never been important to anyone. I haven't got any guilt about anything," bragged the mass-murderer Charles Manson. "These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them. . . . They are running in the streets--and they are coming right at you!" When a real murderer accuses the society he has brutalized, we are shocked, but we are thrilled by the same accusations when they are mouthed by a fictional rebel, outlaw, or monster. In Bitter Carnival, Michael Andr Bernstein explores this contradiction and defines a new figure: the Abject Hero. Standing at the junction of contestation and conformity, the Abject Hero occupies the logically impossible space created by the intersection of the satanic and the servile. Bernstein shows that we heroicize the Abject Hero because he represents a convention that has become a staple of our common mythology, as seductive in mass culture as it is in high art. Moving from an examination of classical Latin satire; through radically new analyses of Diderot, Dostoevsky, and Cline; and culminating in the courtroom testimony of Charles Manson, Bitter Carnival offers a revisionist rereading of the entire tradition of the "Saturnalian dialogue" between masters and slaves, monarchs and fools, philosophers and madmen, citizens and malcontents. It contests the supposedly regenerative power of the carnivalesque and challenges the pieties of utopian radicalism fashionable in contemporary academic thinking. The clarity of its argument and literary style compel us to confront a powerful dilemma that engages some of the most central issues in literary studies, ethics, cultural history, and critical theory today.

260 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Michael André Bernstein was Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Guggenheim Fellow, and winner of the Koret Israel Prize who made prolific contributions to the field of literary criticism. His novel, Conspirators, was selected as one of the three finalists for the 2004 Reform Jewish Prize for fiction, was named one of the 25 best novels of the year by the Los Angeles Times, and was shortlisted for the 2004 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

Reviews

[Bill Weaver · Rating 5 out of 5]

I felt so clear about what exactly I wanted to say earlier this morning, about this book, but now my words fail me. I strongly identify with this book. I wish that I could write a letter to Prof. Bernstein. I will say that despite my five-star rating, the book has imperfections, particularly the lack of resolution. It feels cheap really, in the end, his resolution, but perhaps inevitable. Bernstein sets up a situation which cannot be resolved, yet he takes a stab at resolution, which ultimately proves unsatisfactory. The wise fool (slave) has morphed into the brutal and cynical parasite, this much is true. (Who today can speak truth to the King? Or the President?) Perhaps this is just the fate of democratic societies - without any rigid hierarchical structure, how can we do anything else but destroy any flexibility in our literary or communicative response to hierarchy? By erasing hierarchy (or attempting to erase it), we are perhaps doomed to build an even more monstrous and inflexible hierarchy that remains invisible until certain flashpoints arise, as Bernstein describes in the works of Dostoyevsky or the crimes of Charles Manson. I must admit that I would like to write something (certainly buffoonish and quite inadequate) to refute the current reigning Philosophes (perhaps entitled something like Mad Vengeance Against The Philosopher Kings of Silicon Valley). Bernstein's take on 'genre memory' also leaves much to be desired, as it appears Prof. Bernstein never encountered the systems theory along the lines of Niklas Luhmann (which I would highly recommend, as you already know if you've read certain of my other reviews). When looked at from Bernstein's perspective, it is quite astounding that literary tropes would become embodied in personalities such as Charles Manson. However, when we view these as part of evolving systems of communication, it seems quite evident that information from the literary or art system would become manifest in other areas (or 'subsystems') of society such as the legal system or the general system of society itself, reflected in the popular and ongoing interest in the Manson crimes. Nonetheless I find Bernstein's critique is remarkably successful. I particularly enjoyed his discussion of Celine and the petite bourgeoisie. I spent many years in my twenties under the spell of Celine (his literary works and not his racist tracts which I never read thank you very much.) This is all a jumble, I admit. I hope you can sense my desire to convey how great this book is, despite my own failings as a writer. I found myself suffering from the "medical student's disease" reading this book (when medical students believe they have whichever disease they are currently studying). I found myself the Abject Hero. It is hard to deny the inadequacy of much of our endeavors as human beings, unless perhaps we end up in that rare elite percentage of "success." This book touches on the modern condition in so many ways. I will again admit that the ending left me feeling unsatisfied. He describes the condition so expertly, yet fails to resolve the dilemma. Naturally though, that is part of this dilemma, that there is no resolution. I've been watching the television show Legion lately, and I find it striking that the main character appears to be a villain in many ways, like the Abject Hero. (I read a lot of the X-Men comics in my youth, but not this line recently.) Please avoid continuing if you are in fear of **spoilers** however slight, but the specific episode where the inhuman entity stalks behind Legion and disintegrates the 'bad guys' struck me as particularly powerful. I thought, this is not a hero. This is a villain, yet he is the main character. You can see this also in Walter White of Breaking Bad, etc. I am suspicious of a "hero" that disintegrates human beings so readily as in this television show, Legion. And then it struck me that the government does this, disintegrates human beings quite easily. (cruise missiles and fire bombings and what have you) Of course we are founded on the principal of "limited government," and you can see why this is a good idea when you contemplate that the government has the power to disintegrate people. Yet we are back to the issue of democracy and the Abject Hero. Is there any resolution? Or must we continue to suffer our Charles Mansons and Donald Trumps? I say this not to equate Manson with Trump or vice versa, but merely to point out that they are both products of our society, whichever side of the political divide on which you may choose to reside. As Celine or any other Abject Hero would point out, everyone is equally guilty here (or perhaps equally innocent). The wise fools have finally elected a king to their liking, and the philosophes are resisting quite nicely, don't you think?

[Lanny · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books of "translation" I love, casting
the abject and ressentiment, Nietzschean Slave rancor as a continuation or inversion of the Carnival. This is like looking at modern abjection as a kind of 'black carnival'.. Sort of reminds me of Ladurie's book Carnival in Romans where the thng gets outof control.. Bakhtin yadda ludic revolution..
well this aint ludic revolution, this is alienated folk and THEIR "carnival"

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

.