[lit-ideas] The Weakness of Empire

From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 00:55:28 -0700 (PDT)
Imperial vesting happens because the emperor in his
imperial person is the bringer of triumph, the
vanquisher of foes in a world milieu of constant,
?lurking? insecurity?a favorite term in presidential
rhetoric because it helps to sustain the impression
that enemies are everywhere, all the time, requiring
constant, strenuous, and victorious executive action.
In Rome this quality of the imperial person was
famously styled as victor ac triumphator.

The emperor himself was anointed ultimately through
the legitimizing concept of ?eternal victory.? Rome?s
very identity came to be couched in terms of perpetual
triumph?over foes, adversity, backwardness, over what
was not Roman. Moreover, the nation?s (res publica)
triumph was achieved always through the intercession
of imperial leadership. The emperor had to be the
quintessential generalissimo, and victory thus became
the essential hallmark of his reign. 

The emperor?s authority was established through what
became the central Roman imperial ritual: the imperial
triumph. In the triumph, the emperor?s semi-magical
persona that marshaled the forces of the nation and
led them to victory was celebrated and revealed.

Central to a Roman imperial triumph was the conveyance
of the imperial person to the sacred place where
triumph would be celebrated?a stage entrance always
freighted with grand symbolism. Our emperor?s landing
on the flight deck of the USS Lincoln was no
exception. Instead of a triumphal chariot, the
president arrived on a military aircraft in which he
was co-pilot, thus demonstrating to all his soldierly
bona fides.

The Lincoln itself represented a grand symbol of
American power and an enormous icon of eternal
victory. In this triumph it is significant that the
emperor chose to celebrate exclusively with his
troops, where Americans were collectively placed
outside as second-class onlookers?thus underscoring
their depreciation of citizenship while elevating the
military?s relationship.

In Roman times, of course, the army was often the
source of imperial legitimacy. Just as the army would
proclaim a new emperor by elevating him on a shield
borne up by troops, so this emperor was raised up by
?his own? (ton idion). In a supremely public moment,
the emperor chose to have his own legitimacy ratified
before the American people by the very military that
represented ?his own.?

The procession and prostration of the enemy leader is
a common trope in Roman victory ceremonies. The
vanquished leader undergoes ritual divestiture of his
badges of authority and then is forced to prostrate
himself before the imperial person. This ceremony was
often associated with the army and took place in the
camps. But Justinian transferred this ceremony to the
imperial capital in 534. The public triumph over the
Vandalic kingdom culminated in the divestiture and
proskynesis of Gelimer, which served to signal to the
Gothic kingdoms that their regimes too were
illegitimate, that they were no better than usurpers,
and that they were next.

When U.S. forces pulled Saddam out of his ?spider
hole? they made sure to videotape the filthy and
disheveled dictator during a medical examination. This
was no medical moment but rather a carefully
orchestrated ceremony of divestiture and prostration.
Like similar late Roman ceremonies, it took place in
one of the battle army?s encampments, but it was also
broadcast worldwide, to have the widest public impact,
like an ancient victory procession in the imperial
capital. Indeed, modern ceremony puts its ancient
antecedents to shame. Not only was the entire world
shown again and again the interior of Saddam?s mouth,
but also the purposeful degradation of the former
ruler went beyond even the old Roman act of forced
proskynesis.

http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_05_22/cover.html

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[lit-ideas] The Weakness of Empire

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