In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

294 CODES
the aggressive drive of an archaic animal with the technical perfection of
a guided missile:
And already I feel inside me
The wish to sink my teeth
Into the enemy's neck,
An instinct to slaughter
Families and providers,
To fulfill the task
Of the conqueror.
Hand me your soldier's pass.
(Brecht, Mann ist Mann, 376)
To deprive the conquered of their soldier's passes means to withdraw
even the minimal identity that society normally leaves at every individual's
disposition. Identity cards of every type have thus become symbols
for the strained relation between Collectivity and Individuality. The
individual's liberty is sometimes reduced to the exclusive (yet limited)
right to move in space, and even this slight independence must be confirmed
by a bureaucratic document. A person's presence can never substitute
for an identity card: "'No sailor's card?' He opened his eyes wide in
sheer astonishment, as if he had seen a ghost. The tone of his voice
carried the same strange amazement as if he had said, 'What? You don't
believe there's such a thing as seawater?' Apparently, it was incomprehensible
to him that there could be a human being with neither a passport
nor a sailor's card" (Traven, 14). [see Ocean Liners]
Hopes for a better future are based on the invention of new social
structures or on the emergence of collective movements, rather than on
individual action. Even great individual achievements of the past, like
Bismarck's forging of a new German state, are expected to find their
continuation in collective activities: "Germany is alive. The aristocrats
have abandoned the nation when guidance was most needed; but the
people, whose character Bismarck did not understand until it was too
late, have endured and thus have rescued his work" (Ludwig, 683).
Those few forms of Individuality which provide relative independence
with respect to society hardly ever contribute to changes in the sphere of
Collectivity. One such form-silence-achieves independence at the price
of isolation. None of the multiple and widely admired rituals through