Tony Judt: On the edge of a terrifying world

Tony Judt, the historian and author, was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) in 2008. He describes his condition as “progressive imprisonment without parole.” The life expectancy of ALS patients is normally two to five years after diagnosis.

Judt, who contributes regularly to The New York Review of Books, has been publishing brief memoirs that touch on the many meaningful aspects of his life. Since he has been passionately involved with history and social democracy, the essays reflect on historical change and what the future will bring.

How we missed the revolution

One of my favorite essays is called “Revolutionaries.” Judt describes how Leftist politics and protests of the Sixties completely missed the most important historical event of the day.

For real revolution, of course, you went to Paris. Like so many of my friends and contemporaries I traveled there in the spring of 1968 to observe–to inhale–the genuine item. …

For all our grandstanding theories of history, … we failed to notice one of its seminal turning points. It was in Prague and Warsaw, in those summer months of 1968, that Marxism ran itself into the ground. It was the student rebels of Central Europe who went on to undermine, discredit, and overthrow not just a couple of dilapidated Communist regimes but the very Communist idea itself. …

We in the West were a lucky generation. We did not change the world; rather, the world changed obligingly for us. Everything seemed possible: unlike young people today we never doubted that there would be an interesting job for us, and thus felt no need to fritter away our time on anything as degrading as “business school.” Most of us went on to useful employment in education or public service. We devoted energy to discussing what was wrong with the world and how to change it. We protested the things we didn’t like, and we were right to do so. In our own eyes at least, we were a revolutionary generation. Pity we missed the revolution.

Entering a time of troubles

In a recent essay called “Edge People,” Judt discusses identity — such as national identity — and what it will mean for the social and political future of America and European countries.

I prefer the edge: the place where countries, communities, allegiances, affinities, and roots bump uncomfortably up against one another–where cosmopolitanism is not so much an identity as the normal condition of life. …

We are entering, I suspect, upon a time of troubles. It is not just the terrorists, the bankers, and the climate that are going to wreak havoc with our sense of security and stability. Globalization itself–the “flat” earth of so many irenic fantasies–will be a source of fear and uncertainty to billions of people who will turn to their leaders for protection. “Identities” will grow mean and tight, as the indigent and the uprooted beat upon the ever-rising walls of gated communities from Delhi to Dallas.

Being “Danish” or “Italian,” “American” or “European” won’t just be an identity; it will be a rebuff and a reproof to those whom it excludes. The state, far from disappearing, may be about to come into its own: the privileges of citizenship, the protections of card-holding residency rights, will be wielded as political trumps. Intolerant demagogues in established democracies will demand “tests”–of knowledge, of language, of attitude–to determine whether desperate newcomers are deserving of British or Dutch or French “identity.” They are already doing so. In this brave new century we shall miss the tolerant, the marginals: the edge people. My people.

It’s a beautifully constructed essay that deserves to be read in its entirety.

Judt says of his latest book, Ill Fares the Land, which he describes as a letter to young people: “It’s about not forgetting the past. About having the courage to look at the present and see its faults without walking away in disgust or skepticism. … I do think we’re on the edge of a terrifying world, and that many young people know that but don’t know how to talk about it.”

I know the future will crush me to death, but I don’t know when

Evan R. Goldstein, who wrote an excellent piece on Judt for The Chronicle of Higher Education, asked Judt about his essay “Night”, in which he discusses his illness.

Before I leave his apartment, as night falls, I ask him why he decided to write such a personal account of his illness. He pauses, inhales deeply, and says, without drama or self-pity, “This is an imprisoning disease, and every now and then there is a desperate desire to break out of the prison and tell people what it is like.” Judt takes another deep breath. “The disease is like being put in prison for life, no parole, and the prison is shrinking by six inches every week. I know that at some point in the future it’s going to crush me to death, but I don’t know exactly when.”

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