Minor Thoughts on Heroes of a New Historical Memory

“Human beings are capable of the highest generosity and self-sacrifice. But they have to feel and believe that what they are doing is truly heroic, timeless, and supremely meaningful. The crisis of modern society is precisely that the youth no longer feel heroic in the plan for action that their culture has set up … the problem of heroics is the central one of human life.”

– Ernest Becker, Denial of Death

Over the past couple of weeks I have contemplated flaws of new heroisms in contemporary politics, and key values that vault seemingly ordinary persons like Andries Tatane and The Marikana 34 into heroes of history among a myriad of possible heroes whom my daughter would claim for her generation. While politicians, ancient and modern, have employed hero worship for their own apotheosis (i.e., cult of personality), the problem of heroics is also central to human life because, , our desire to be more than our own metabolism has been too often perverted by the false heroics of nationalism, ideology or religion.

For instance, my home, unlike many religious homes in South African townships inundated with religious icons and portraits that stood for adornments and pictorial depictions of heroes per se, mother had her own make-shift iconographic wall or shrine where faces of revolutionaries like Steve Biko hung. Plastered in between furnisher store pamphlets and fading lingerie models, one could reasonably suppose that such icons, over and above their mystical significance throughout history; have planned a great portion of historical memory from a personal perspective. It would also be fair to therefore assume that these similar icons played a greater role in the collective memory of our people today.

Though the decision to commit politically was a personal one for these heroes and icons, the need for contemporary heroes is directly related to external conditions. Considering just how conditions have worsened in social structures of governance, the more heroes are needed and more is demanded of them. Though media had in the past somewhat compartmentalized how we recall certain socio-historical events, times and depictions of people involved directly or indirectly, much of what was exposed seemed to embody a selectivity of appreciation more like the casual way we look at photographs today. These icons, though established as canons for future appreciation and depiction have inadvertently fossilised the relevance of many of our heroes of history. Taking into account the crucial role played by symbols, and how our world is now jeopardized by the loss of the symbolic life, a new form of hero that helps to make our world spiritually significant in response to this grave situation is however emerging.

Notwithstanding that our focus now, as a global culture, is on competition for material supremacy and resources, this materialistic focus has led to the decay of the arts, morality and ritual. The need for heroes whose identities transcend the iconoclastic urge for immortality seems inadvertent. Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell recognized this type of hero, a type for our time, now evolving in response to current crises—crises that are not so obvious as earthquakes, tsunamis, or other disasters. These crises that are cultural and are reflected in what Joseph Campbell has called “the collapse of the timeless universe of symbols.”

The term “Icon”, though often used in a wide number of contexts for an image, picture, or representation; it is a sign or likeness that stands for an object by signifying or representing it either concretely or by analogy, and classical heroes have always been iconized through such icons since antiquity.

Take for instance the image of Christ which permeates every Christological perception of God and The Universe, and how it was rooted in manipulated representations of history and the personage who influenced it one way or another. That sole depiction has virtually lobotomised most humans from conceptualising any other possible messianic personages who existed throughout history. The art of creating such icons, though overtly politicised by ancient institutions, follows certain symbolisms that carry meaningful messages about events, and in our contemporary societies, mass media has served to create and expose such icons of those we can deem as heroes.

The icon of Hector Peterson, another example of national iconoclasm entrenched into the historical memory of June 16, 1976, lucidly demonstrates the ostensible power of icons as susceptible to political manipulation. It is thus that our verification tools employable in attempts of accessing historical memory require stringent non-conformists notions and knowledge of causes and effects. Ultimately, one is left to ask: “why has media created certain icons and sustained the existence of certain individuals throughout historical memory as opposed to others involved in similar situations that called for new heroisms?”

The answer lies in understanding the impulse to de-emphasize heroic actions which were evident in certain parts of the country in the 1970’s by mass media and political institutions themselves, providing evidence of media’s selective approach to constructing historical memory, personages and identities. The extensive media coverage of the events that led to June 16 and those which ensued in the following years seemed to go out of its way to play down some instances of heroism which that tragedy had elicited in other areas of South Africa, but this truth will forever be ignored. The established and moderated injunctions for the proliferation of iconic images were uniformly enforced, revealing the ambivalence of the populace dumb-founded by the populism based on hero-need and worship.

News media of that time evinced an unmistakable desire to play some stories down, but how did our present media arrive at the point where the heroism of some is thought to diminish others—where heroism in general has become an embarrassment (in case of gay rights activist victims for an example), something not to be talked of in public for fear of giving offense to non-heroes?

Undeniably, in the epoch of globalization an individual can still change the development of the country and of the whole world, so this gives reasons to some scholars to suggest returning to the problem of the role of the hero in history from the viewpoint of modern historical knowledge and using up-to-date methods of historical analysis is of essence for the survival of most of our pivotal social structures.

A very different kind of political analytical perspective, hearkening back to the early days of the Armed Struggle Movements, should now resuscitate the discourse on Contemporary Politics of Heroism, which can save our nation and world.

This political discourse depends upon millions of ordinary South Africans deciding to commit to sustained political action, on a scale ever greater than the ’60s through to pre-94 elections. It will depend, in short, on each of us. And the interesting part is that those of us who engage it automatically become icons and heroes by doing so – whether or not we succeed. Someone has to risk his life to put an end to the threat of violence and disorder to the whole community. The problem, as in the parable of the mice, is that there will forever be no incentive for any particular individual to be the one to bell the cat.

Human beings since time immemorial have wished to live on in the genes and fond memories of their offspring and future generations, liberate their societies from oppression, serve their communities, make lasting contributions in their professions and leave behind works of art that would be admired forever. But now we are among the first humans in history who are called to the highest mission of all: saving all human civilization for millennia to come.

It is this epoch that will usher forth its own self-less martyrs, who will be canonised into heroes and saints through a variety of symbolic icons our children will be fed.

Such as our genes could be “icons” for our future posterity, these images, iconographic depictions of events, commemorative emblems of these new heroes will forever be intertwine with the collective memory of our people in a mesh history that is both authentic and verifiable.

But could there be influenced a difference between the heroes and icons representing them? Will the icons take into account the personal – the fact that perhaps one of these heroes neglects his family and children? At what cost will the heroic actions of the future come at a personal level for the heroes? Heroes of the past are not necessarily heroes of present time and vise versa; any person can be a hero for saving life of one or of millions, domestically or worldwide. This happens because of continuous progress and re-evaluation of values.

However, what is the new heroism required for the minds of our country’s youth? According to Julie Adam, teacher of English at the University of Toronto, "One critical cliché says that there can be no heroism … because there are no instances of heroism in modern life."

The characteristics of a new form of heroism which will become a pervasive feature of the modern world will still be inextricably linked to the development of communication media. With the development of the media, the visibility of individuals, actions and events will therefore be severed from the sharing of a common locale: one no longer has to be present in the same spatial-temporal setting in order to see the other or to witness an action or event. The rise of this new form of mediated visibility of heroism will transform the relations between society and its power structures.

Today, thanks to this mediated visibility, political rulers are now able to appear before their subjects in ways and on a scale that never existed previously. Skilful politicians exploit this to their advantage; with the help of their PR consultants and communications advisers, they seek to create and sustain a basis of support by managing their visibility in the mediated arena of modern politics. But mediated visibility is a double-edged sword: it also creates new risks for political leaders, who find themselves exposed to new kinds of dangers. Hence the visibility created by the media becomes the source of a new and distinctive kind of fragility.

However much political leaders try to manage their visibility, they cannot completely control it: mediated visibility can slip out of their grasp and can, on occasion, work against them.

“In modern societies, characterized by an elaborate division of real labor, the division of mnemonic labor is elaborate. In traditional society there is a direct line from the people to their priest or storyteller or shaman.

But shared memory in a modern society travels from person to person through institutions, such as archives, and through communal mnemonic devices, such as monuments and the names of streets. Some of these mnemonic devices are notoriously bad reminders. Monuments, even those located in salient places, become “invisible” or illegible with the passage of time. Whether good or bad as mnemonic devices, these complicated communal institutions are responsible, to a large extent, for our shared memories.” Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 54.

We have clearly arrived at an evolutionary watershed: the first time that our species is heading toward species-suicide by its own hand. If we act politically to try and save it we will know a heroism that none before us have experienced. Our inner desire to live lives of meaning will be remembered for all time to come, as long as humans in whatever number still walk this earth.

A heroism not tainted by aspirations of grandeur, a heroism that cannot be underplayed when transformative events are analysed in the aftermath of their occurrence. Take for instance the “inconvenient heroism of Gaddafi” (as dubed by Dinizulu Mbikokayise Macaphulana), which indirectly spawned the revolutionary occurrences at Tahir Square, cannot be successfully denied as also a pivotal methodology for the new hero. Gaddaffi’s the inspirational foundation of this revolutionary impulse that has expanded to be a phenomenon of genuine global scope.

It is therefore reasonable to believe that these numerous protest movements around the world would either not have occurred, or taken a different form without the overall inspiration provided by the several dramas encompassed beneath the banner of the New Heroism, which I hope not only motivates my children towards revolutionary self-sacrifice, but cements a new breed of icons not bridled with guilt and tyrannical self-gratification. South Africa essentially needs this methodology to emancipate itself from capitalist agenda that is paralysing many developmental efforts by its populace in order to make progress toward greater formal unity, moving away from the memories and symbols of the past that had previously rendered the process of integration incoherent.