In Ricardo Piglia’s El camino de Ida we are asked to take seriously the motives of the ‘Recycler’. Evaluate this statement with reference to both relevant theoretical readings and examples from the text

 

Ricardo Pigalia’s novel, El Camino de Ida, is loosely based on the real-life events of the Unabomber case whereby Ted Kaczynski was responsible for a series of political bombings against prominent intellectuals over a span of two decades.  As such this essay will investigate the motives of the ‘Recycler’, in relation to the political ideology of Kaczynski published in his political manifesto, The Industrial Society and Its Future. The Recycler, also known in the novel as Monk, wrote a similar such text titled the Manifesto on Techno-Capitalism. At the centre of the argument, it critiques capitalism and the negative effect it has on modern society by taking away people’s autonomy and freedom as well as the negative impact it had on the environment. Without going into detail, capitalism is defined as a “organismo vivo”[1] that reproduces endlessly due to its capacity for economic and technological renewal. While their manifestos can be considered a ‘brilliant critique’ on society by some, there is still a negative stigma associated with their work due to their use of violence. Once both figures are caught by the police, they are trialled on grounds of insanity.  This leads readers to question how seriously one should take their motives if it is associated with such controversy.  

This essay will analyse the motives of the Recycler in relation to the concept of the beautiful soul syndrome by Tim Morton in order to understand how he was capable of such acts of violence in order to promote his political ideology. The beautiful soul maintains a split between themselves and the world because they believe that their own conscious is superior to others.[2] It is this chasm that separates them from the rest of society, and this they have no problems in seeking to destroy it. While capitalism is associated with evil within the manifesto, it has become an undeniable part of society. It is only through radical solutions such as revolution, that one would be able to create a new social alternative. Kaczynski writes in his own manifesto that revolution in this sense does not mean political revolution against the government, but rather a revolution to overthrow the economic and technological basis of society.[3] The revolution is not trying to change policies, but rather is trying to change an entire system. Indeed, the victims chosen for the bombings were very specific. They were scientists or intellectual academics deemed to be at the forefront of technological advancement and they were destined to destroy all that was human in society. Thus, the bombings become an act of revolution with the intent to interrupt the progress of technology. The beautiful soul syndrome shows us how far we would have to go to change things so completely to be in line with the Recycler’s view. The problem is not in the ideas of the beautiful soul itself, but rather their relationship to them.[4] According to Hegel, there is little difference between theory and action for them, and in this case the lack of distinction has led to violent actions. Kaczynski wrote in his manifesto that there were only to be a few people who were capable of this type of revolution, “revolutionaries should not expect to have the majority of people on their side”.[5] Both manifestos were only aimed at a few likeminded extreme environmentalists instead of inspiring a widespread social movement.

The anti-capitalist and general pessimism towards the direction of civilization expressed within the manifesto is a narrative that goes against the mainstream conventions of capitalism. That is not to say that other highly educated members of society do not hold the same view but that the time has not yet arrived for them to be taken seriously by the wider public. Wittgenstein, as quoted by Pigalia, says that “No es absurdo creer…que la era de la ciencia y de la tecnología es el principio del fin de la humanidad”[6] but he also admits that his thinking was still not accepted during his time. The Recyclers push for revolution would ultimately lead to anarchy as the new social reality. However, he doesn’t mean collectivist anarchy but rather individualist anarchy. Individualist anarchy eradicates the distinction between the one and the many so that the individual also comes to mean the multiple.[7] While the Recycler appears to be acting alone in his bombings, that is not to say that there are not others who have a similar such philosophy who also want to become “héroes anónimos”.[8] The individual must continue to resist and be victorious despite being perceived as being alone in their beliefs, indicating that one can’t entirely dismiss the motives of the Recycler as being an anomaly.

The use of direct action in the form of bombing and killing intellectuals also raises the ethical question as to how far one should go in order to be heard. In contemporary capitalism, anyone is able to speak out but the radical democratization of the media has caused problems. There are too many speakers and too few readers. As a result, it is difficult to have one’s opinion heard or noticed.[9] It is faced with this problem that the Recycler felt compelled to kill because “matar a ‘algunas personas’ para conseguir lectores”.[10] The manifesto made no belligerent demands, but rather he wanted to write as an academic and ensure that he was heard while doing so. He managed to blackmail news agencies into publishing his manifesto which proves the rhetoric of his thinking. Kaczynski later on went as far as to state that murder was an acceptable response to the resistance encountered by the larger scale because of the lasting impression it created and because it was a justifiable response to perceived oppressive conditions imposed by the elites.[11] By targeting specific people for the bombings as explored above, the Recycler has connected his thoughts to actions so that the crimes form a coherent series. He perceives the intelligentsia and the scientists as a threat because they perpetuated capitalism so killing them becomes a form of self-defence. One can reference an interesting debate by Chomsky in regards to the legitimacy of violence being used as a political act. He argues that for any rational person “violence is not legitimate unless the consequences of such action are to eliminate a still greater evil”.[12] The Recycler is thus seen as the first person to respond so actively to society’s implicit demand for social justice. Pigalia’s novel is successful in exploring this double narrative in regards to political violence because it doesn’t immediately condone the use of violence but rather explores the motives behind it. The real-life Unabomber case had a hostile reception as a result of his terrorist activities.

Literature plays an important role in the novel because it exposes the danger of readers taking what they have read too literally and applying such thinking to the real world. Conrad’s book, The Secret Agent is featured as one of the main sources of inspiration for the Recycler. His manifesto almost becomes a kind of parody of it, creating an implicit criticism of those who confuse fictional action with real life political action. The Recycler is a radical figure in that he was not only limited to words, but rather also engaged in action. He even used Conrad’s name or deviations of it to check into the hotels from which he would send out bombs. He imagines himself as the main character. The Recycler relied on his literary pursuits and “his evident use of fiction to help him make sense of his unhappy life”.[13] Pigalia creates a nightmare universe for the Recycler in El Camino de Ida in which capitalism works so perfectly that the only violence that exists is the individual violence of lonely readers who find inspiration in books.

The connection between literature and political crime suggests that literature should not be entirely dismissed as a motive for the Recycler because it can still be used as a weapon. Pigalia directly places a passage from Conrad’s novel into his own novel. Ida Brown, another professor from the university has made relevant annotations that coincide with the political ideology of the Recycler’s manifesto. While it is never explicitly revealed whether she knew the Recycler personally, she was able to make the connection between Conrad’s novel and his political crimes when he had assumed that no one would make the link between the two. She highlights phrases such as “act of social revenge”[14] and the act of directing blows “outside the ordinary passions of humanity is the answer”.[15] His bombs go beyond the traditional motives of terrorism, because they also aim to be wholly destructive against the capitalist society. These references to elements from Conrad’s book in the Recycler’s manifesto allow for an inverse process for the reader. It is the readers who are the ones to assemble those ideas together. They are the ones who have to read and to understand the relationship between one and the other in order to understand.[16] However, this process of plagiarism also means that not all the meaning from the novel can be entirely translated. Books by themselves are isolated and mean nothing but when one reads them in context, then they begin to have meaning and can thus be translated into action in the case of the Recycler.

The Recycler and the Unabomber are defined by their isolation, both living in a cabin in the woods alone, effectively turning their back on society and technology. This has a negative effect on the perception of their motives by the public because “to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act”.[17] They both create the image of a lone man trying to rebuild society by himself. The cabin in the woods grounds their actions because it allows them to carry out their terrorist activities undetected but it also becomes a metaphorical crypt form which their ideology can’t leave. If politics is to be taken seriously, then the agent must be recognizable and visible, even if later on they are declared as ‘insane’. Much of Pigalias novel is an acknowledgement of this political theory. The very title of the novel alone, El Camino de Ida, can mean a one-way trip, a departure without return or even a disappearance. The Spanish significance of ‘Ida’ can be interpreted in many different ways. The English translation of the novel by Robert Croll is The Way Out. While the Recycler is a dangerous man who is capable of violence, he is still curiously ineffectual on a larger scale. His cabin comes to be his pit of isolation where he remains, cut off from the rest of the world and thus not able to engage in true political action. 

After the Recycler was caught, prosecutors wanted to declare him insane during the trial so that his political ideology did not have to be taken into account. The essence of the trial would be redefined in terms of analysing his character, effectively closing the case and disregarding his political motives. This was a normal occurrence within the United States because “las razones políticas radicales eran vistas como desvíos de la personalidad.”[18] instead of being dealt with as a product of society.  Finnegan writes of the real-life case that Kaczynski had been “denied his day in court”.[19] Pigalia further writes that “la discusión sobre la locura no podía ser una condición del juicio sino su resultado.”[20] This emphasis on individual action, instead of uniting them under the politics of solidarity has given rise to a string of lone gunmen in the United States. These gunmen feel as though they are not able to rely on others to help them and as such, feel compelled to act on their own which leads to the use of violence. The novel is therefore an attempt to hear the case in political terms by highlighting the difference between the way in which the two cases in the text and in real life were handled. Perhaps one day the political motives will become part of an inevitable political discourse that the readers and the jurors can no longer avoid hearing in the current day.

The anti-capitalist sentiment of the manifesto has relevance to the modern-day society but the actions of the Recycler has been largely viewed as a negative attempt to engage in political action. The Recycler exhibits many characteristics of the beautiful soul syndrome which leads him to engage in such violent activity because he remains removed from the rest of society and thus has no problems in attempting to destroy it. The isolated lifestyle of both figures has made it easy for the justice system to dismiss his political ideology as a result of ‘insanity’ which immediately closes down the potential for any discussion. While there is an implicit criticism at the Recycler’s reliance on literature to find meaning in his own life, there is no doubt that it can still be used as a weapon, often with violent results.  

 

Bibliography:

 ‘The Legitimacy of Violence as a Political Act? Noam Chomsky debates with Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag, et al’ (1967) https://chomsky.info/19671215/ [accessed: 12/11/2020]

Balderston, Daniel, ‘Pigalia y el unabomber: Literature y política en El Camino de Ida’, Revista Landa, 5.2 (2017) 378-391.  

Barnett, A. Brett, ‘20 Years Later: A Look Back at the Unabomber Manifesto’, Perspectives on Terrorism, 9.6 (2015) 60-71.

Conrad, Joseph, 2nd edn, The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale (Methuen and Co: London, 1907) Kindle Edition.  

Fiala, Andrew, ‘Anarchism’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2017) https://plato.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/encyclopedia/archinfo.cgi?entry=anarchism [accessed: 13/11/2020] 

 Kaczynski, Ted, The Industrial Society and its Future (1995), p. 13 <http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf > [accessed: 14/11/2020] 

 Kelman, David, ‘Politics in a Small Room: Subterranean Babel in Piglia’s El camino de Ida’, The Yearbook of Comparative Literature, 63 (2017) 179–201.

Morton, Timothy, Ecology without nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics (Michigan: Harvard University Press, 2007)

Pigalia, Ricardo, El Camino de Ida (Buenos Aires: Debolsillo, 2015) Kindle Edition. 

 Rosa, Othoniel Luis, ‘Traiciones en El Camino de Ida’, OpenEdition Journals (2019) https://journals.openedition.org/lirico/7670 [accessed: 14/11/2020]

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[1] Ricardo Pigalia, El Camino de Ida (Buenos Aires: Debolsillo, 2015) Section 2, Chapter 8, Paragraph 5, Kindle Edition.  

[2] Timothy Morton, Ecology without nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics (Michigan: Harvard University Press, 2007) p. 117.

[3] Ted Kaczynski, The Industrial Society and its Future (1995), p. 13 <http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf > [accessed: 14/11/2020]  

[4] Morton, Ecology without Nature, p. 118.  

[5] Kaczynski, The Industrial Society, p. 25.

[6] Pigalia, El Camino de Ida, Section 2, Chapter 8, Paragraph 10.

[7] Andrew Fiala, ‘Anarchism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2017) https://plato.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/encyclopedia/archinfo.cgi?entry=anarchism [accessed: 13/11/2020]

[8] Pigalia, El Camino de Ida, Section 4, Chapter 12, Paragraph 103.

[9] Luis Othoniel Rosa, ‘Traiciones en El Camino de Ida’, OpenEdition Journals (2019) https://journals.openedition.org/lirico/7670 [accessed: 14/11/2020]

[10] Pigalia, El Camino de Ida, Section 2, Chapter 8, Paragraph 3.

[11] Brett A. Barnett, ‘20 Years Later: A Look Back at the Unabomber Manifesto’, Perspectives on Terrorism, 9.6 (2015) 60-71 (p.65)

[12] ‘The Legitimacy of Violence as a Political Act? Noam Chomsky debates with Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag, et al’ (1967) https://chomsky.info/19671215/ [accessed: 12/11/2020]

[13]Pigalia, El Camino de Ida, Section 3, Chapter 10, Paragraph 34.

[14] Joseph Conrad, 2^nd edn, The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale (Methuen and Co: London, 1907) Chapter 2, Paragraph 109, Kindle Edition.   

[15] Ibid, Chapter 2, Paragraph 109.

[16]  Daniel Balderston, ‘Pigalia y el unabomber: Literature y política en El Camino de Ida’, Revista Landa, 5.2 (2017) 378-391 (p.387)

[17] David Kelman, ‘Politics in a Small Room: Subterranean Babel in Piglia’s El camino de Ida’, The Yearbook of Comparative Literature, 63 (2017) 179–201 (p.181)

[18] Pigalia, El Camino de Ida, Section 3, Chapter 2.5, Paragraph 6.

[19] William Finnegan, ‘When the Unabomber Was Arrested, One of the Longest Manhunts in FBI History Was Finally Over’, Smithsonian Magazine (2018) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/unabomber-arrested-longest-manhunt-fbi-history-over-180968744/ [accessed: 10/11/2020]

[20] Pigalia, El Camino de Ida, Section3, Chapter 2.5, Paragraph 6.