‘The interpreter’, by Richard Sennett: the world as a stage

We are not so different from the Shakesperian melancholic Jaques of ‘As you like’, nor of the Juvenal Roman when he said “all Greece is a scenario and all the Greeks are actors.” Centuries ago we lived interpreting Our little role in this theater in the world.

Perhaps never more than now we are distribution actors in a work of global representation, issued in real time and of many times unreal results. The last book of Sennett‘The interpreter’, is lucid, ironic, acute and of such a pleasant scholarship that he is able to hide his deep knowledge about our masks and interpretations. After reading we will not say that “the past is a foreign country,” The past is us. Yesterday, today and tomorrow.

We no longer pray to Jano for a more reassuring future. We do not pray to Jesus. We do not follow Machiavelli. However, they continue to accompany us in this more dangerous and uncertain world since demagogues have dominated public life. Are called Sánchez or Trump. Hoping that these accidental leaders, with their unpredictable actions, fail to perpetuate their role in this scenario and this work that we have to interpret, remembers Sennett a Max Weber: “Most charismatic figures are disturbing of the State or established religion.” Charismatics without charisma are the worst.

Everything is tame but on the way we can leave unwanted or desirable seizures. Sennett It helps us to know better this world of masks and carnival. The whole year is Carnival. We, interpreters of our lives, need to learn paper and interpretation. We need to know how to say our own life and get rid of not living in the farce, the deception and evasion of ourselves. This is also about this book, knowing what our anchor is, Do not cancel our self in appearance “As in the case of Sylvia Path: smiling on the outside, good in her role as mother and wife and responsible citizen … while inside she is depressed and full of a homicidal rage” we want Path. We don’t want your life.

We don’t want to be deceived by good interpreters of the lie. We are notified of Those politicians who know the art of manipulation. The racist confessed who was George Wallace, governor of Alabama, coaxed from television with his segregationist speech and got ‘white’ workers, precarious dockers, applaud their topics. Wallace, like Trump, was an excellent performer. The truth does not matter. The performance was the secret. Sennett recalls the power of “empty words”, the slogans in the Spanish Civil War, where their father and uncle were with international brigades.

The disappointment of that ‘epic’ for the left and the Democrats. The intestine struggles between anarchists and communists lived in the first person. They disappointed themselveslike Octavio Paz and George Orwell: “The slogans of Soviet communism were as empty as those of fascism.” There is a lucid distrust in Sennett against the hollow words that even removed him from Hannah Antby excessive in your faith in the word. “The visceral theater fills the absence left by empty words.”