Revolutionary Tango
“If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be a part of your revolution.” ~Emma Goldman
I always think Emma Goldman could have made that even more to the point: If you want a revolution, then DANCE! Could that really be true? I like to tell people that the Argentinian dictators were more afraid of Tango than they were of Rock and Roll. Here’s how Christine Denniston describes it:
This story was told to me by someone who ran a number of Tango dances in the mid-1950s. There were laws banning the presence of minors in nightclubs. These laws were rigidly enforced for Tango clubs, but were not enforced at all for clubs that only played Rock and Roll music. So where before the coup the best way for a young man to meet a young woman was in a milonga, suddenly it was much easier to meet a girl by dancing Rock and Roll. Overnight, young men stopped learning how to dance the Tango. There was no reason to spend three years learning how to dance Tango, when the girl you liked was in a Rock and Roll club instead. The generation that were 18 years old in 1955 learned to dance the Tango well and with confidence. The generation that were 13 didn't learn it at all.
It seems extraordinary that a repressive right-wing regime would encourage Rock and Roll at a time when conservatives all over the world were trying to stop young people dancing to the wild new music. But it served the purposes of the regime, and it served them well.
She’s right: it certainly seems extraordinary at first glance. So perhaps we should glance more carefully. What does this mean?
We might get a little insight from philosophy, which I admit begrudgingly. Especially since I’m thinking of a German philosopher––other than Nietzsche. I’m not the biggest fan of German philosophy. Rather than being a gateless gate, it often strikes me as the supreme example of a gated gate. One that often leads to nothing in particular, except a dilapidated garden of bragging rights: you get to tell people you’ve read Hegel. There are exceptions. Nietzsche of course stands out as the most significant––a real love of Sophia, and a willingness to dance with her. Heidegger has some beautiful substance now and then if you can overlook . . . well, let’s not mention it here. In our own time there are philosophers all over the planet constructing gated gates and putting up signs on the near and far sides of the gated gates that have stood for decades or even centuries. This has never been exclusive to German philosophy, but so many of its big names share a remarkably gated quality, as if they are certain Sophia can’t be seduced in anything but abstract, anal retentive, and hyper-rational turns of phrase.
One of the major German heavyweights of our own time is Jurgen Habermas. While not quite as arcane as Heidegger or Hegel, Habermas doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, and I can’t really imagine Sophia blushing or swooning at his flirtations. But I must confess that he can be provocative. I even read one of his books the whole way through––I think. And it has something worthwhile to tell us. It’s called The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. I’m not going to dig it out so I can remind myself of all the details and nuances. I’ll just give you what I can recall as most interesting.
The book basically describes the rise and fall of the public sphere. The public sphere is the place where people get together to intelligently and conscientiously discuss the issues that affect us all, issues of the public domain. We THINK we do this today, but not so. The issues appear to be discussed: it seems like we’re discussing health care, and the environment, and education reform, and matters of war and peace. But Habermas argues that critical structures are missing. We’re not really having intelligent and conscientious conversations. The existence of a genuine public sphere seems to be restricted to a relatively brief historical moment, and all we have to do is describe it. Then you’ll understand right away what’s missing. Moreover, you’ll understand the role Tango can play in the evolution of human culture.
Habermas tell us that, by the first decade of the eighteenth century, there were 3,000 coffee shops in London alone. People met to talk about the issues of the day, and their conversation was supported by a fully independent press that facilitated access to information. So here we have the critical structures: people had access to reliable information about what was actually going on, then they met to intelligently discuss the meaning and significance of the information, and the possibilities for action based on the their deeply held common values. This is simply unacceptable to the structures of power. Those structures therefore exerted pressure on the structures of this vibrant public sphere, and slowly a transformation occurred. The newspapers gradually became the mouthpiece of the very institutions they should be criticizing. Consequently, we were left with a mock public sphere in which issues are skillfully evaded and obscured, and those still committed to the truth are divided and marginalized. I have discussed elsewhere the importance of the Fourth Estate and how it has become a major tool in the manufacture of consent. But we should see all three of the major structures necessary for a functioning democracy: access to information, genuine coming together, meaningful outlets for political action. A backdrop for all of this is the kind of culture that promotes intelligent, conscientious, and critical conversation, which is part of genuine coming together.
It’s nice to see that first structure of democracy getting shifted again in our time. Thanks in part to the internet, the informational aspect of the public sphere shows signs of waking up. But it’s not a sure thing. Lobbyists for the structures of power are hard at work to make changes in the internet that will strengthen the power structures while weakening any hope for a genuine public sphere. They have had victories in other areas very recently, like the postage hike that will cost independent media a lot of money they don’t have, and that madness going on with the FCC.
The other two structures of democracy, as well as the backdrop, are very much under the control of the structures of power. Our elections cannot be called elections. The schizophrenic nature of our political process has been discussed in another posting, and you will find far more credible commentators by simply searching the web––while you still can. The genuine coming together is also quite weak. This relates in part to that backdrop, which includes an education system with no apparent capacity to prepare people for genuine meeting and for intelligent, conscientious, critical conversation. Did you ever have a class on how to have an intelligent conversation, or what it means to have a critical discussion (not a discussion full of criticisms, but a discussion that tries to probe the root causes of a given phenomenon)? How about a class on genuine connection, the art of listening, the spirit of being together with others?
Given that connectedness is built into our being, given that we long for it, the structures of power have to accommodate it. This is accomplished by giving the FEELING of coming together. The principle way of giving the FEELING of coming together while simultaneously circumventing any genuine connection to each other that embodies our highest values is to simply unite us against a common enemy. When this succeeds, it allows for the exercise of greater control over us. Not only is genuine connection stifled, but so is rational, creative, and critical discussion. And this allows the greatest trick of all: we seem united, but we remain divided and more in the grips of the structures of power.
Marijuana is an interesting example, even if you don’t think it should be decriminalized. Terrorism is another great example. What they have in common: “Those people . . .” The endless fable told as a bedtime story to pacified children, children encouraged to believe in bogey men and monsters in the closet, children commanded to follow the dictates of questionable authorities on pain of finding themselves victimized by these monsters in unthinkable ways. Without noticing, they become victims of the questionable authorities operating without question.
Those endeavoring to do some good in the world should avoid this tactic at all costs. Don’t villainize corporations, politicians, hedge fund managers, war mongers, and racists. Instead, focus on cultivating compassion. Structures of power depend on our thinking in the combative, us-versus-“those people” way. But it will not solve our problems. Never has. Never will. “They” is a way of BEING. It is an I-It, a breakdown in Interbeing, a form of ignorance. It is this way of BEING that creates the trouble, not any particular thing done within its narrowing confines. Rather, everything done within this way of being contributes to our suffering. Shift the way of being and you begin to DISSOLVE the problems instead of solving them with another limited solution.
The other thing to understand about the structures of questionable authority is that such structures naturally FEAR our connectedness. The story of the structural transformation of public sphere illustrates this, as does Tango. Bars, brothels, and crack houses are not real dangers to the power structures that be. Neither are racy media and rock n’ roll. For the most part, these things seem to work to the ADVANTAGE of the structures of power. Why? Perhaps because they sublimate our revolutionary energy while simultaneously dissipating the revolutionary concerns we all share. We FEEL like we have come together and rebelled. But we haven’t. We’ve spent our energy to no good end. We haven’t connected in an effective way, and we haven’t furthered our critical understanding of our situation. We haven’t fueled a genuine revolution, because that requires more information, more connection and conversation, and more outlets for action than we will likely find in stadiums, brothels, or beer gardens. Early resistance to rock and roll probably had racist undertones. But the power structures quickly embraced it at a time when it could have become dangerous. By now, all of these seemingly rebellious things have become part of the structures of power. Music is dominated by corporations. Liquor is just another industry (and Dionysus isn’t the man in charge). Brothels and prostitution are the same: they serve mainly to help channel the biological and psychological frustrations created by the structures of power. These structures may like to feign concern, and they may like to encourage our belief that such activities are dangerous and “bad,” but if they really were so, the structures of power would move more vigorously to suppress them.
The real trouble comes from coffee houses, alternative presses, and tango dancing (only with THAT did the bars and brothels become a threat––once again, for they were trouble in the age of the Sacred Prostitute as well, but the authorities did away with her and freeze-dried the anima . . . now the waters of Tango, the waters of Connectedness, will bring those energies back to Life and set them free to evolve and reach an ultimate unity on a grand scale . . .).
When people CONNECT, their humanity comes to the fore. Coffee houses have not yet reclaimed their status as enemy of power because most of us go into a mass produced café serving mass produced beverages that exploit the masses in massive ways, and we stay disconnected by keeping our headphones plugged in while we digest the rancid fodder of mainstream corporate journalism. If we were all going in there with alternative media in hand and actually CONVERSING with one another, new coffee taxes would appear on the House floor in record time (or whatever else they might dream up, including, I’m sure, Patriot Act insanity and Presidential Power abuses).
Do you get what has Tango to do with all of this? D.T. Suzuki explains it clearly:
Samantabhadra's arms raised to save sentient beings become our own, which are now engaged in passing the salt to a friend at the table, and Maitreya's opening the Vairochana Tower for Sudhana is our ushering in a caller into the parlor for a friendly chat . . . we see both the Bodhisattvas and the Buddhas shining in the sweat of their foreheads, in the tears shed for the mother who lost a child, in the fury of passions burning against injustice in its multifarious forms -- in short, in their never-ending fight against all that goes under the name of evil.
Our arms reaching out in a Tango embrace teach us to allow that Love to enter the world right where we stand, right in our own bodies and minds. We allow ourselves to be MOVED, more deeply than ever, by the emotions of the soul that come through the music. Thus Tango becomes a battle against evil, and thus we understand why agents of violence and oppression would instinctively fear it. Above all, the structures of power cannot withstand genuine connection, genuine creativity, genuine experiences and expressions of Love. Not romance or sex, but Love, that thing that Rumi, Buddha, and Jesus demanded, that thing that conquers all.
So, come to Tango, you rebels! Come to Tango, radicals and activists! Come to Tango, all you artists and poets! Come to Tango, dear lesbians, homosexuals, lost and found heteros, wild lovers, asexual philosophers, hopeless romantics, sexually inhibited virgins, desperate nymphomaniacs! Come to Tango, alienated ones! Come, quieted ones, you with the red dress hidden in your closet––or do you just stare at it in the shop window? Come to Tango, you wallflowers, you shy ones, you lonely ones standing around your secret fires––why the coldness when you could be heating the world? Come to Tango you who seek revolution in every color, revolution in Red and Black, revolution in Silver and Gold, revolution in Yellow and Green, revolution in Indigo moonlight, revolution of psyche, revolution of soul, come and embrace it, learn how to WALK your talk, to Dance the upheavals of your dreams, Dance the concrete evolution of the spirit! Come to Tango, you alchemists, throw yourself into its sacred vessel, let your lead turn to gold in fires fanned by the bellows of a bandoneón!