20057890

8/13/2019 20057890

1/21

Geo- and Biopolitics of Middle-Earth: A German Reading of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings"Author(s): Niels WerberSource: New Literary History, Vol. 36, No. 2, Essays Probing the Boundaries of the Human inScience (Spring, 2005), pp. 227-246Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057890 .Accessed: 14/02/2014 13:59

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to New Literary History.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 150 .164.176.165 on Fri, 14 Feb 2 014 13:59:32 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhuphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/20057890?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/20057890?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup

8/13/2019 20057890

2/21

Geo- and Biopolitics of Middle-earth:

A German Reading of Tolkien's

The Lord of the Rings

Niels Werber

I. Race and Space in German Discourses?

After the Downfall

This year, 60 years after the end of the Third Reich, the German

public predictably is celebrating the collective reminiscence of

this era. The Oscar-nominated German movie The Downfall, with

its "human" perspective on high-ranking Nazi "protagonists" and their

entourage performing the regime's lastact in the "Fuehrerbunker," is

playing a significant part in this culture of remembrance. Whereas the

protest generation in the 1960s and '70s criticized the hundredfold

continuity of Nazi institutions, staff, laws, and ideology, The Downfall is

styling the end of the National Socialist dictatorship as an epochal tabularasa. Whoever outlived the breakdown of the Reich was sentenced in

Nuremberg or reeducated under Allied surveillance. Therefore, May 8,

1945, can be seen as Hour Zero, "die Stunde Null." Such a standpoint

gets backing from The Downfall, which dramatizes the end of the Third

Reich in very suggestive pictures of destruction, annihilation, death, and

suicide. Based on the destroyed battlegrounds in the film, the audience

mayassume that

something altogethernew would be built.

However,in

this essay I will investigate which components of the Third Reich have

survived the collapse and are still present today.This interest in a "subliminal" continuity of pre-1945 modes of

thinking was enhanced by the tremendous success of John Ronald Reul

Tolkien's epic novel The Lord of the Rings on the German book market

and the awesome triumph of Peter Jackson's movie adaptation on

German movie screens. Both novel and motion pictureare

obviouslyobsessed with the differences between certain races (Elves and Numenor,Dwarfs and Hobbits, Ores and Southrons, Istari and Balrogs), their

genealogies, bloodlines, crossbreedings, and even their biogenetic procreation (Uruk-Hai). Their respective realms (pretty Shire, proud

Gondor, beautiful Imladris, terrible Mordor) mirror these differences.

New Literary History, 2005, 36: 227-246

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

8/13/2019 20057890

3/21

228 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

Through reading Tolkien's novels, seeing the movies,or

playingcom

puter games like "The Battle for Middle-earth" (EA Games, 2004), one is

introduced into a certain bio- and geopolitical knowledge: first of all,races are different not only in terms of skin color or height, but in moral

worth, refinement, wisdom, and political integrity. The races are either

hereditarily good and wise like Elves or genetically evil and dumb like

Ores, and therefore they make "natural-born"enemies. The absolute

and insurmountable hate between Elves and Ores is not outlined as a

consequence of political decision-making, but as a result of their

opposing DNA sequences. To pass off contingent, historical, and changeable political differences as "natural" or "given" oppositions is paradig

matic in discourses of social Darwinism since the mid-nineteenth

century. That "the Slavs"were a race hostile to "us" or "France" was "our"

sworn enemy were typical phrases in this German context. In Nazi

Germany, the constructionof a strict difference between "us" and

"them" itself was dramatized as threatened through the menace of

mingling: "the Jew" was tainting "our" blood ina biogenetic warfare

against the body of the German nation. Within the biopolitical dis

course, this threat directly provided the justification for an extermina

tioncampaign against

theJewish

race.

Secondly, in a purely geopolitical context,one is taught that the

differences between the territories of these races should be considered

results of intense interactions between the cultivating nations and their

soil. A primary result of this relationship is that the literal ground ofa

racial war of extermination is not neutral, but partisan. The whole

world, including the territoriesand landscapes, climates and flora,

the

waters and their tides and currents, the birds and animals?everything is

playing its "natural" role in the conflict between the free, nobleraces of

Elves, Men, and their allies, on the one hand, and the "slaves" or

"creatures" of evil and their collaborators, on the other hand. Therealms, territories, and regions of the different nations have been

molded through years of control in such a deep way that they should be

counted as important parts of the political and military power of Middle

earth's races. Space and nature are highly politicized,to such a degree

that one has to take into account the geopolitical and biopoliticaldimensions of Tolkien's world.

To view "natural borders" like rivers or mountains as a living periph

ery of the society and, vice versa,to understand society

as aliving

organism or political body are integral parts ofa geopolitical perspec

tive.1 Thus, a reader of a German geopolitical author, like Carl Schmitt,Karl Haushofer, or Friedrich Ratzel, or a scholar of the discourses of

eugenics, breeding,social Darwinism, or racism, either of whom is

reading Tolkien's best sellers or viewing Jackson's blockbusters, would


8/13/2019 20057890

4/21

GEO- AND BIOPOLITICS OF MIDDLE-EARTH 229

easily be convinced of the proposal that he is encountering a world offiction that could be described best by pre-1945 discourses. It is not onlythat the analogies between the battle for Middle-earth and the Nazi

campaign of racial warfareare

striking and not only thatsome random

elements of the Third Reich's politics seem to have survived the

"downfall" in the genre of fantasy books, films, and games: ratheran

analysis of deep structure, narrative logic, rhetoric, and topology in

Tolkien's works reveals in terms of geo- and biopoliticsan almost

frightening coherence. I do not assert that Tolkien has written his novels

in order to reproduce German discourses of race and space, but Iwould

like to argue that a German audience might find a field of differences,

models, and arguments in them thatwas essential to a pre-1945

hegemonic discourse, but fervently is declared dead in the Federal

Republic of Germany.The eminent scholar of East European history Karl Schl?gel has

remarked in his latest book on Geopolitics and the History of Civilizations

that the postwar generations have forgottenor

repressed everything of

the Nazi semantics of space and race, including its long tradition of

German political geography. That discourse has completely "vanished in

Germany,"he claims.2 Authors such as Samuel

Huntington, ZbigniewBrzezinksi, Benjamin Barber, or Robert Kagan would not refuse to think

in geopolitical terms and so were tabooed and successfully banned from

the German public sphere.3 Still, here geopolitics are regarded as

obsolete.4 However, these discourses of geo- and biopolitics, in popular

fantasy or science fiction novels, have outlived the "downfall"5 so that a

German audience is able to discover them again in Tolkien's novels and

their film adaptations and could learn to think (or feel) in modes ofrace and space once more. Last year, the major German television

broadcaster ZDF commissioned a huge poll of 250,000 German readers,

asking what their favorite book was. It was The Lord of the Rings. TheGermans love it. Perhaps the "downfall" theorem and the

uncommon

esteem for The Lord of the Rings form two sides of the same coin. Because

1945 is styled as a radical break in German history, one is able to enjoythe pleasures of a story based on race, soil, and blood without the

smallest amount of a bad conscience. "Obsolete" or "taboo" prewar

discourses have found an inconspicuous "ecological niche" in the

fantasy genre, and they prosper there. "Aragorn isa

super-human of

purest blood and a born leader? Well, he should reign as a king and wipethe maggot folk of subhuman creatures out of Middle-earth. That's

quite natural, isn't it?" Consider this assertion. It appeals to the buried

"geopolitical unconsciousness" of popular media that I am interested

in.6 My reading does not simply point out the numerous similarities

between The Lord of the Rings and German geopolitics. Rather, my aim is


8/13/2019 20057890

5/21


to show that the novel can be described as a transformation of a

consistent field of discourse rules into fiction. The very same differentia

tions, metaphors, and causal connections between certain concepts of

nature and politics organize the German bio- and geopolitical semantics

and structure Tolkien's text in its smallest detail. In order to support this

argument, I will focuson the occurrence and the interconnection of

some basic assumptions of the geopolitical discourse in The Lord of the

Rings such as the construction of the other as an absolute foe in total

warfare (section 2), the function in this construction of biopolitics (3),the belief that every nation takes part in a "clash" of ethnically shaped

"greater regions" (4), that a politicized nature itself is mobilizing in a

global and total war to end all wars (5), and that a secure international

order could be expected only from a strict separation of nations (6).

II. Annihilating the "Other":Absolute Foe and Total Warfare

Both Tolkien's novel and German geo- and biopolitics integrate

spatial, racial, political, aesthetical, moral,and cultural differences into

a coherent ideology.7 Asa consequence of colonization, through

em

pires and its "space-taking" races, land, rivers, andseas become political

in such a deep and intense way that nature itself takes part in politicaland military action?a mountain acts hostile

or a river attacks the fiend.

Bios and nomos, the fundamental terms of early twentieth-century

philosophy and politics,8 fuse in Tolkien's novels.9 All his texts, myths,and annals are crammed with geopolitical maps and family trees, charts

of bloodlines, and remarks on races and their true and pure or mingled

and diminished blood. Even mankind is subdivided into noble and foul

breeds.10 To return from exile as a victorious king, for instance, is

Aragorn's fate because it is his heritage, passed down from his ancestors

to him through thousands of years of strict intraethnic, "pure" breeding.His Dun?dain (a certain prodigious human race) origin is unquestionable; not even a single drop of minor blood runs in his veins. Certainly,this could be declared as old-fashioned endogenous procreation. How

ever, in The Two Towers, the second part of the movie trilogy, Saruman

changes froma sorcerer into a genetic engineer, breeding his

own new,

strong, martial, cannibalistic Ore race of "fighting Uruk-Hai." This

discourse of breeding certainly does not refer to the genealogies of

ancient English sagas or noble houses, but to modern projects of

purposeful manipulations of the genetic properties of races, like those

that started during the 1930s.11 Ultimately, whether the ethnic distinc

tions are engineered or bred, the hereditary antagonism between the


8/13/2019 20057890

6/21


different races can only be "solved" in a total warfare. The struggle forracial purity is fought as a warfare of "annihilation."12 I will give some

examples from the battle for Middle-earth told in The Lord of the Rings.Gandalf, the leader of the "good" faction, and

a company of allied

Rohan Riders are attacking the foe's armynear Helm's Deep. "The Ores

reeled and screamed and cast aside both sword and spear.. . .

They fled.

. . .No Ores remained alive; their bodies were uncounted; . . . the heaps

of carrion were too great for burial or for burning. 'Let the Ores lie,'said Gandalf."13 Is it legitimate to kill a fleeing, unarmed, helpless,terrified, wounded, and surrendering enemy? Yes, if they

are beasts,

barbarians, monsters, or, in Schmitt's term, an absolute foe. In the

second part of the movie trilogy The Lord of the Rings, one sees the vast

troops of the traitor Saruman more thanonce

straight-out slaughtered

by the blond, brave, battle-winning men of Rohan, who leave no

breathing body behind.14 The foe is no individual, no life form with a

will of his own; Ores are constructed as a teeming mass of awful brutes.

Ores count only as numbers in a sporting competition of death played

by the Dwarf Gimli and the Elf Leg?las. "'Twenty-one,' said Gimli.

'Good ' said Leg?las, 'but my count is now two dozen. It has been knife

workup

here'"(524). Butchering by

numbers,slaying

as work.Everybureaucrat of a conquering and annihilating middle-European empire

knows it well: killing means counting. In The Lord of the Rings, all the

parties and foesare

engaged in extermination of "the other." These

"creatures of Isengard, these half-ores and goblin-men that foul craft of

Saruman has bred" (524), must die at the same rates at which they were

produced in the genetic factories beneath Saruman's stronghold,

Orthanc. So, a little bureaucracy is necessary, helping to deal with huge

figures: the lists of body counts run by the Dwarf and the Elf were in

dreadful use all over occupied middle-Europe at the same time that

Tolkien was writing his story of the final war between the hostile races ofMiddle-earth. In the cinematic play

as well as in Tolkien's novel,

massacres of beaten, wounded, or yielding troops castno dark shadow

on the shining appearance of the upright Horsemen of Rohan. Thereason is obvious and simple. The troops killed are living "carrion," and

the difference between them and the Riders of Rohan is so huge, the

"otherness" of the Ores so striking, their brutish, awful life form so

revolting, and their inferiority so unquestionable, that any thinkingabout the validity of laws in war does not appear. On the contrary: kein

Pardon (no mercy) rules,as the saying goes, in total warfare.15

The revolting "heaps of carrion" on Rohan's battlefields offer morethan a random parallel to some smoking mass graves in the occupied

Ukraine, because the biopolitical motives of thesemassacres are the

same in the novels and in geopolitics, and they are in the very same way


8/13/2019 20057890

7/21


embedded in a broader context, that is, the concept of total warfare,

which has drawn a lot of academic attention since World War I. In 1932,

Schmitt, the most influential German scholar of political theory and a

professor of international law, argued in his Concept of Politics that

construction of absolute otherness of the enemy leads directly to total

warfare. Because "we" are human and "our" aims just, the foe is

construed as inhuman and his causes judged unjust. The "inhuman"

enemy deserves neither pity nor lawful treatment, but instant death.

Such punishmentcan be counted neither as murder in civil law nor as a

war crime in international law because an inhuman "other" does not

enjoy any human rights.16 The absolute enemy is countedas a "sheer

body" or "naked life."17 He is recognized as a living carcass that should

be killed and burned to cleanse the soil from its polluting physicalpresence. The foe as the absolute "other" is excluded from mankind,

from human legislations and morals.18 Jackson's movies have made this

inhumanity of the foe visible and evident. The other is not worth life; he

is foul carrion. In the 1930s, this concept of an unrestricted exclusion of

the other was quite new in the discourse of international law.Within the

frames of European public law from the Westphalia Peace Treaty (1648)

until the early twentieth century, the belligerentswere

states.19 The

enemy soldier (who was white and European) was respected as an

equal,20 taking the rights of his sovereigns to warfare as legally and

lawfully as his opponent did, settling battles like duels.21 In the history of

Middle-earth, every duel that the Elves or Numen?r proposed to settle

the conflict was either refused by the dark forcesor

accepted onlyto set

a trap. The concept of a duel was presented only to be negated. The

German geopolitical thinking up to the Nazi era did the same. The

classical jus belli (law of war) of sovereign states that construes the enemyas an honest foe was regarded

as ahalf-forgotten past. Only for this

obsolete ius gentium (law of nations), Schmitt claims, the "foe neverceases being a human."22 In comparison, in Middle-earth the foe is

inhuman. Since its creation told in Tolkien's Silmarillion, no peace could

ever end the eternal war between Ores and Elves, because their innate

differences are essential as well as existential; warfare is their "natural"

destiny and "peace" just a temporary pause to gain new strength for the

next battle. As a consequence, both Sauron and his Ore armies, on the

one hand, and the races of the West, on the other hand, are lookingforward to the "final battle," the "war to end all wars." Schmitt often

presagedthat legitimating the "war to end all wars" indicates the

beginning ofa "total war," that is, a war that knows no differences

between civilians and combatants or children and warriors, between

military places, like camps, fortresses, or war harbors, and civil cities and

demilitarized regions. The aim to end all wars justifies every means to


8/13/2019 20057890

8/21


win; nobody and nothing is spared. Schmitt argues that a totalitarianconcept of warfare does not allow neutral positions.23 Every party getsinvolved, voluntarily

orinvoluntarily. The whole world, every state, every

nation, is forced to engage itself in total warfare. Middle-earth providesa perfect example of the connection stated by Schmitt between the end

of the ius gentium and the rise of total warfare against the absolute other:

every attempt of a sovereign realm, like Doriath, Nargothrond in the

first ages of Tolkien's universe,24 or Lorien and Fangorn in Middle-earth,to keep itself in a guarded and "splendid" isolation fails. Not only do

such peaceful folks as the Hobbits take part in the Ring wars (morenolens than volens) ;beasts and plants, too, are mobilized and set up onone side of combatants or the other. The living space (in the sense of the

Nazi term Lebensraum) becomes a participant too. "Every life-form, every

species took sides and became a party in these days," we read in the

Silmarillion about another great war against Sauron.25 It isan

agenda of

"total mobilization" of every resource.26 Fairy tales might have been

Tolkien's model of a living nature, but the political concept of total

warfare is unknown in fairyland. In Middle-earth, everybody and every

thing is either friend or foe, tertium non daturP The exception that floutsthe rule is the

strange figureof Tom

Bombadil,who names himself older

than the world and to whom the deadly peril of the treacherous One

Ring means nothing and shows no influence (129-30). From the

standpoint of Schmitt, as well as from the perspective of Tolkien's

narrator, this neutrality is justa remembrance of past ages, and the

movies do not include this character and his example of bold neutrality.Peter Jackson's cinematic Middle-earth discerns foes and friends only.This means total warfare for everybody and all parties. The foe can bekilled at will. He is "carrion."28

Total warfare against the absolute "other" is neither cruel nor

inhuman; even wounded civilians or surrendering troops could be slainwithout hesitation, just because "otherness" disqualifies them from

being honest opponents. The dialectic of "us" and the "other," the logicof "our" values and "their" worthlessness, Schmitt claims, "is unfolding

a

deadly logic of discriminations and devaluations of the other until the

final solution of an annihilation of all different life which is not worthyto exist."29 The other lives a life not worth living, a "naked life," as

Giorgio Agamben puts it, a life that can be taken at will anytime by

anybody without committing a crime.30 The attacking Th?oden, King of

Rohan and close ally of Gondor, is just one example: "On they rode, the

king and his companions. Captains and champions fell or fled beforethem. Neither ore nor man withstood them. Their backs were to the

swords and spears of the Riders, and their faces to the valleys" (528).The enemy tries to escape, but is surrounded. It is a true battle of


8/13/2019 20057890

9/21


encirclement, as in thefighting

in Russia in the 1940s.31 Thegreat armyof Isengard is facing "their final doom" (528). They all die and vanish

"like a black smoke" (529). It is quite hard not to think of the dreadful

smoking "heaps of carrion" of executed "subhumans" behind the

Wehrmacht's Eastern front. However, text and film achieve a true

miracle in that the fascinated audience does not feel any pity for those

whose bodies were burnt. The other must be "rooted out" or at least be

"expelled."32 This biopolitical war will not end till the death of the last

Ore or until the flight of the last Elf to the continent of their cousins in

the far west. Victory in Middle-earth (as in the Nazis' battle for middle

Europe and the purity of the Aryan race) always means total victory in atotal warfare. The powerful Witch-king of Angmar, a Nazg?l, tries to

"sweep" all the Elves and Dun?dain into the sea. As he loses the battle,not one of his Ores remains alive in the wide North (1026).

III. Inferior Blood and Natural-Born Barbarism

"The Ores were first bred by the Dark Power of the North in the Elder

Days. It is said that they had no language of their own, but took what

they could of other tongues and perverted it to their liking; yet theymade only brutal jargons, scarcely sufficient

even for their own needs,

unless it were for curses and abuse" (1105).The Ore is the "other." The race of the Ores is frightfully different by

origin, language, habits, and looks. In Appendix F of The Lord of the

Rings, we are particularly briefed on the different races of Middle-earth,

including Ores.33 They are counted as "creatures, being filled with

malice," and as a natural "foul race." All this is evident enough in their

appearance, but is nevertheless backed by academic observations. The

narrator, whoobviously

is a studiedphilologist,

like Oxford's famous

professor Tolkien, is tracing back the "form of the name" Ore throughthe history of languages to the root "snaga," which means "slave" (1105).

The Ore is a slave. This chain of logic seems to reecho the Nazi lore that

the term "Slawe" (Slav) for the Eastern races means "slave," thus

indicating the inferiority of those Eastern races and making them

suitable only for forced labor or extermination.34 Like Indians and

"Negroes" in Western literature, the Ores do not possess any of their

own cultivated modes of designating themselves. They are coerced into

referring to themselves as Ores, thus solidifying the differences between

superior and inferior races in terms of culture and barbarity. As EdwardSaid has shown in his intriguing readings of Kipling's Kim, the Indians in

this novel are obliged to use British language, stereotypes, and hierar

chic distinctions to describe themselves. The "other" in this imperialistic


8/13/2019 20057890

10/21


novel is a construction of the colonizing power, thus confirming thedifferences between "them" and "us."35 In Jackson's adaptation of

Tolkien's novels, not a singlescene is shot from the perspective of

an

Ore. They lack a point of view. We do not see the dreadful attacks of

Rohan cavalry or Elf-snipers from the standpoint of the "other." We justsee

Ore-packs teeming, crawling, and perishing?noneas an individual.

As Deleuze and Guattari have pointed out, the construction of a

swarming "pack" implicates the abnormality and otherness of its ele

ments.They

are "outsiders," theyare

"pests,"36 theyare "vermin";37

indeed, as Tolkien observes, they are "the maggot-folk of Mordor" (687).Thus, the direction of the camera underlines the otherness of the Ores

and justifies their fate of extermination. The Ores have no point of view

in the movie trilogy just as they have no language in the novel.

In describing the otherness of the Ores, the novel refers to an old

(eighteenth-century), well-established discourse of developmental biol

ogy that cultivates the belief that depravation and perversion originatedthe differently colored species of mankind. Becoming the "other" means

degenerating. This assumption implies a common starting point, be that

the white couple Adam and Eve or the white Aryan race. The Ore, in

Tolkien'scosmos,

shares his roots with Men and Elves.They

have "stock"

in common (1005). The foe is our depraved and perverted self and so

must be eliminated inside the collective body of society and inside

individuals to prevent degeneration.38 On the other hand, Tolkien putshis degeneration theory in the frame of modern Darwinian evolutionary

biology, that is, in terms of breeding, a procedure not limited to Nazis.39

The descent of the Ore is unnatural and artificial. They were manufac

tured. The speciescame into being by genetic experiments, crossbreed

ing, and dark magic. Morgoth, the evil force in the first age of the world,

produced them using men of different tribes and elves as genetic"stock." Ores are the outcome of engineered processes of depravation?

and, typical fora modern discourse of genetics, of improvement.40 What

they lack in comparison to their genetic ancestors is humanity and

individuality (from the narrator's perspective) or weakness, hesitation,and disloyalty (from the perspective of the Dark Lord). Their depravation is, from another standpoint, their improvement in strength and

obedience. Ernst J?nger certainly would judge them as the heroic,

disciplined, collective, and postindividual "type of the worker."41 It is a

question of point of view. Tolkien wrote at a time in which every militarycommander dreamed of troops with perfect obedience, functioning as

"weak-willed bodies" or "zombies," as Paul Virilio calls them,42 that could

be commanded by their masters according to their will to perform

everything, including senseless death instorm attacks under machine


8/13/2019 20057890

11/21


gun fire.43 Ores are such troops, suited perfectly for any battle of

annihilation.

IV. Receptions: Discovering the "Other"

In his study of Cinema and Space, Fredric Jameson deals with "a

geopolitical unconsciousness."44 That unconsciousness of the cinema,

he claims, finds its resources in the racist semantics of the nineteenth

century."In the absence of

general categoriesunder which to subsume

such particulars, the lapse back into features of the pre-World War I

international system is inevitable and convenient (it includes all the

national stereotypes which, inevitably racist whether positiveor

negative,

organize our possibility of viewing and confronting the collective

Other)."45 However, the latent geopolitical deep structure of The Lord ofthe Rings is embedded in post-World War I discourses as well. The

reception of the film easily provides proof for his mobilization of

geopolitical concepts. The Internet publication "The Seat of Kings"refers to the world-political context of the novel: "1939?Germany

invades Poland. The Nazis are waging a campaign of terror against theJews. Britain declares war and J. R. R. Tolkien has begun a manuscript,which he now titles 'The Lord of the Rings.'"46 The Second World Warand the second Ring War begin in the

same historical moment. Sauron

would thus be Hitler, collecting his powers in 1939 in order to plungethe free world into the dark and to enslave it eternally. The Web site

continues: "When Tolkien was writing Lord of the Rings during the

Second World War, his own son, Christopher, was serving in Europe

fighting the ultimate evil." Sauron and Saruman go together like Hitler

and Mussolini, and Saruman's review of his Ore army near Orthanc can

be comparedto Hitler's mass meetings. The Ores

are the Germans, but

others may think of other comparisons."At the sight of the evil Ores with their dark skin and their face

paintings it is hard not to think of the Aborigines," Stephen Shapirodeclares in the German magazine Der Spiegel. Shapiro asserts that the

director of The Lord of the Rings, which was filmed in New Zealand, had

used local ethnic differences between white English and dark-skinned

natives in a "racist way."47 For example, dark skinned and small also

implies primitive, sly, and dangerous. Such cultural codes of the body

are,in

fact, transferring anthropologyand

ethnologyinto

biopolitics.48However "politically correct" Shapiro's view on the film may be, it reveals

the same nationalistic narrow-mindedness that it criticizes, because not

all cultures will "think of the Aborigines" when seeing the Ores. To the

contrary, in the Russian federation, for example,one considers the


8/13/2019 20057890

12/21


armies of the Ores and their alliances to be a typically Western allegoryof the danger from the East. Igor Djadan writes, "Tolkien's transparent'anti-oriental' allusions made his Lord of the Rings an unsurpassedtextbook of xenophobia."49 Inspired by the latest postcolonial studies,

Djadan's readings find signs of a "clash of civilizations" everywhere in

Tolkien's epos and Jackson's films, which, viewed froman

Anglo-Saxon

perspective, tell the story of a battle of an advanced, civilized Western

world against the retarded barbarianmasses of the East, ever hungry

to

conquer the world. Dydan notes:

On the other hand, in his Lord of the Rings Tolkien nicely shared the wretched

diffidence of westerners and their profound fear of the defence technologiesowned by their eastern neighbours. This fear is mixed with the impertinent

haughtiness of a European who does not lose his feeling of superiority even

when he is beaten. Tolkien describes goblins as a race delighted by machines,

motors and explosions. However, he says, they were not mature enough to rise

to that level of civilization yet, and instead simply hated everyone without

exception, honest and prosperous people in particular.

One could add that Tolkien's Ores are a reference to the German

stereotype of the Russians as mere material (Menschenmaterial) .50 The

"feeling of superiority," Djadan observes, is founded on this anti-Slavic

stereotype, because even the downfallen Germany considered itself

beaten only through the sheer numerical predominance of the vast

Soviet army.51

Thus, the film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings ismeeting enthusias

tic interpreters all over the world who find in the battles for Middle

earth a picture of past and current political conflicts. These very

heterogeneous readings conspicuously agreeon the idea that ethnic

differencesshape political

conflicts. This unintendedglobal

consensus

shows more about our current situation than about Tolkien's The Lord ofthe Rings. It is

a state of affairs that may be seen in terms of fatal geo- and

biopolitics. Whether the Ores represent New Zealand's natives or

Russian inferior "material," whether the Elves are English or the

Numenors Americans or Germans, these interpretations agree that such

categorizations observeour world again in

a war of races, and "main

area orders,"52 or "orbits."53 Dydan's notorious reference to Huntingtonis a prime indicator.54 The universal claim of the last Elves and

N?menors as standing for everything good and right in the whole world

has been interpreted in Putin's Russia as an allegory of the hegemonicaspirations of the West. Djadan: "We cannot help concluding thatfreedom and democracy

areinterpreted by the West not

as an unshak

able principle, but rather as one of the instruments of establishing its


8/13/2019 20057890

13/21


own supremacy."55 I want to put aside all these astonishing but contin

gent allegorical updates and their political implications in order to

pursue again the question as to how far Tolkien's cosmos itself promotes

geo- and biopolitical concepts.In exploiting beautiful pictures of Liv Tyler, the film misleads the

spectator: in Tolkien's novel it is not Arwen who conjures up the river

Bruinen in order to ward off the Nazg?l. She is very far away from the

scene, and safe. Rather, it is the wounded, half-unconscious little

Hobbit, Frodo, who flees from the Black Riders all alone in the ford. "Go

back to the Land of Mordor, and follow me no more " he shouts with a

thin, powerless voice. "His enemies laughed at him with a harsh and

chilling laughter." The leader of the Nazg?l, a powerful sorcerer, rides

into the ford and raises his hand. "Frodo was stricken dumb. He felt his

tongue cleave to his mouth, and his heart labouring. His sword broke

and fell out of his shaking hand." Soon the Nazg?l captain will take the

ring from the frightened and almost paralyzed Hobbit?but instead, the

river, like a "cavalry of waves," terrifies the horses and the horsemen of

the enemy and drags them away (208). "The river," Gandalf reports,"overwhelmed" the Black Riders, discerning "friends and enemies,"

drowningthe foes

only.56Whoever

distinguishesbetween friend and

enemy in this way acts in the field of the political and is thus a party to

war.57 This is the very perspective Tolkien's novel offers. Bruinen is an

ally of Elrond's, "and it will rise in anger when he has great need to bar

the ford. As soon as the captain of the Ringwraiths rode into the water

the flood was released" (209). Bios and nomos are allies in Middle-earth's

total warfare. The difference between the film and the novel makes it

very clear what I wish to show. "There are few even in Rivendell that can

ride openly against the Nine" (205). Very true indeed: the beautiful

daughter of the Lord of the Elves cannot stop the Nazg?l, nor can the

experienced war heroes Glorfindel and Aragorn (217), nor, surely, canMr. Frodo Baggins of Bag End. What can repel the Nine is a force at

once natural and political: the river. "The rivers long defended us," an

Elf explains (339). This does not mean that rivers as such would have

been hard to cross for Ore armies or Nazg?l. There are fords, and one

can build bridges. "The rivers as boundaries of peoples are only effective

under certain conditions," explains Ratzel. If the organism is strong, the

"barrier function" will work well as "political boundary" of a social

organism.58 In thecase of the border rivers of the Elves' empire, the

rivers themselves take sides for the organism whose periphery theyare.

The intervention of a river is not an accidental event. Middle-earth is

equipped with several of these active bio- and geopolitical boundaries.

At the beginning of their voyage the four Hobbits cross the "Old Forest"

that borders on the Hobbits' province, Buckland. The trees of this forest


8/13/2019 20057890

14/21


do not like strangers. "[T]he trees actually move, and can surround

strangers and hem them in. In fact long ago they attacked the Hedge"

(the border of the Shire). "[T]hey came and planted themselves right byit, and leant over it" (108). A battle for space thus began. The boundary

was approaching, to use Ratzel's language (ME 34). In his view, a

"natural boundary" is always part of a "living body" (that is, "peoples and

states"), and it changes accordingly (ME 33). Only with axes and fire

could the Hobbits keep up their colony on this side of the river

Branduin. Accordingly, the "Old Forest" ensures that every crossing of

theHedge

isextremely dangerous

for Hobbits. The fellows who loiter in

the forest barely escape their extermination.

Saruman's armies of Ores and Wargs haveto suffer as well from a

political and therefore truly hostile nature. They have been driven byRohan's troops into a spooky forest near Helm's Deep, a forest that has

marched up in a valley over night. "Wailing they passed under the

waiting shadow of the trees; and from that shadow none ever came

again" (529). The forest of Fangorn has come in order to take revengefor the abuse of axes and fire by the Ores and Uruk-Hai. All fighters of

these evil races are exterminated completely, whilst Elves, Hobbits, and

their allies have safe travel through the forest. Along the lines of ethnicdifferences the forest Fangorn distinguishes between friends and en

emies.59 "It isOres that they hate," explains Leg?las to the worried Gimlion their way through the extremely vivid forest (534).

Another classical boundary of geopolitical thinking reveals itself as a

combatant: as the attempt of the Fellowship to cross the mountains fails

in horrible snowstorms and avalanches, the mountain "Caraduras the

Cruel" is made responsible for it (282).60 "Itwas no ordinary storm,"

avers Gimli, "it is the ill will of Caradhras. He does not love Elves and

Dwarves" (285). Unfortunately there is only one pass that leads from

Imladris over the mountains. This explains Caradhras's rank in the

narrative: "In the lack of passes lies the rise of one single pass to world

historical significance" (ME 53). On their voyage to the south the

comrades cross Eregion, the old empire of the Elves. Although they are

observed and probably chased, they believe this place to be secure: "I

think we will rest here," says Gandalf, "not only today but tonight as well.

There is a wholesome air about Hollin. Much evil must befall a countrybefore it wholly forgets the Elves, if once they dwelt there." The stones of

Eregion themselves speak to Leg?las: "Deep they delved us, fair they

wroughtus,

high theybuild us; but

theyare

gone" (276).That space has been "territorialized" in such a deep and sustainable

way that the very soil remembers the rule of the Elves long after their

Realm vanished, and the air is as wholesome there as it is foul in Mordor.

In analogy to Ratzel's anthropogeography, geopoliticians could call it


8/13/2019 20057890

15/21


"biogeography" if a living culture ( bios) takes possession of a landscapein such a way that space and culture form a symbiosis.61 Frodo and Sam

experience something like this in the lost province Ithilien, whose

figure, flora, and fauna are still inspired by Gondor's nomos. In Schmitt'sconnection of "life" and "space"

to the concept of "living space"

(Lebensraum), biopolitics and geopolitics are fused with each other.62 In

Karl Haushofer's notorious Magazine for Geopolitics, Kurt Vowinckel states

in the 1939 volume (published four days before the invasion of Poland)that "race and space form a permanent living community."63

In an

intense bio- and geopoliticalinteraction of

people and nature,a

genuine "German living space," in Schmitt'ssense of the term, would

come into being.64 On the one hand it "has formed the face of the

landscape in a German sense," and on the other hand it is colonized bya "people's body," which only comes into being as a unity in its

interaction with this space. The space was formed by the German

people, and the Germans were formed by the soil they were colonizing.65This classical doctrine of political geography, which could be traced

back to Hegel's philosophy of history, determines the relationships of

space and race in the entire novel.66 The political consequences of this

doctrine are identical in the narration and German geopolitics. The

"living space" beyond the eastern and southern boundaries, formedonce

by German settlers, is, of course, part of the Greater German

empire, although as a result of the Versailles treaty other (Slavic) peoplelive there.67 But the territory "remembers" the Germans

as Hollin

remembers the Elves and Ithilien the Numenor. The agenda suggestedis the same: the "other" should be removed from German and Gondorian

clods of soil. Geopoliticians have claimed all these territories beyond the

legal borders of Germany as a living part of the Reich, just as the

Stewards of Minas Tirith dispose of "the realm of Gondor to the furthest

of its ancient bounds," although it has been centuries since they could

secure or even see these boundaries. However, the land seems to wait for

their return, in contrast to the "others" dwelling therenow. So, the

"living space" itself legitimizes the old claims of the conquerors of

Gondor. In anticipation of the events to come, the nature of Ithilien

herself adorns the ruins of a very old Gondorian statue with flowers of

silver and gold: "Look The king has got his crown again," Sam exclaims,and Frodo comments: "They cannot conquer forever " (866). The land,

marked by "the great stone kings of old," waits for the return of its true

king. Conquered Ithilien remains Gondorian because the Kings ofGondor once territorialized its land and nature, shaping its nomos. In the

very same way, German geopoliticiansnever

stopped counting the "lost"

provinces like Pomerania, Silesia, or Alsace as integral parts of the

Reich.


8/13/2019 20057890

16/21


VI. Main Area Orders in Middle-earth

Is any alternative to a permanent total warfare offered within this field

of geopolitics? The empires are closed to each other. "Between Lorien

and Fangorn there were no visible borders, but neither the Ents nor the

Galadrhim ever crossed them."68 Gimli is the first Dwarf to enter Lorien

in ages, an event which is expressly called a singular exception. In 1940,Schmitt called this model of separation the "main area order with a ban

of intervention for external powers."69This is his only alternative to

a

worldwide total warfare ofextermination,

and it is Tolkien'soption

as

well. Any inferences from alien ("raumfremd") powers are banned; the

Monroe Doctrine sets the example fora

gated "regionalism."70 In his

Clash of Civilizations, Huntington baptized this principle of noninterven

tion in conflicts outside the Western main area, that is, the Americas and

Europe, the doctrine of abstinence.71 While he refers to culture, thus

motivating the geopolitical borders of the different orders and powers,Schmitt defines his greater region as an ethnically homogenous empire

("Reich").72 Germany's mainarea order, Schmitt insists, has to keep

out

every external power of foreign origin ("raumfremde und unv?lkische

M?chte"). A world order in this view is an order of ethnic separation.73In Tolkien's cosmos of the novel, although in not the movies, even little

Hobbits think in these terms. The self-evidently mean and ugly Sauthrons,which have come to the Shire in the course of the new tobacco and wine

trading, are expelled by the homecoming comrades: "This isn't your

country, and you'renot wanted," says farmer Cotton in the name of the

people (987). Foreigners out?or die The racially inferior men are

exterminated by the Hobbits that are half their size. "Merry himself slewthe leader, a grey squint-eyed brute like a huge ore" (992). Thus theShire becomes an ethnically homogenous gated community again.

Although they do not like the fascist beadle, the good-natured beerdrinkers do not favor at all a melting-pot society. "The Shire to the

Hobbits" could be their slogan, judging by their behavior.74Bios and nomos are central concepts in the whole Lord of the Rings, not

only when the text deals with the construction of the other, but also inthe sketching of the self. In Tolkien's novels, purity of race is always asure sign of superiority of knowledge, wisdom, and strength. Thus, for

instance, the prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth by the sea is pointed out,"for he and his knights still held themselves like lords in whom the race

of Numenor ran true." His race "was ofhigh blood."

Incontrast, the

peoples that Gondor mobilizes in order to defend their capital MinasTirith are described as "reckoned men of Gondor, yet their blood was

mingled" (806). Gondor's decline, deplored throughout the novels, is

always led back to the mingling of the blood with "inferior" human


8/13/2019 20057890

17/21


beings. Mingling means weakening.75 A "short and swarthy folk" is theresult of the blood mingling among the races (806). Thus, to reproduceoneself outside the nation's bloodlines must be considered high treason,

just like the Nazi law on the "purity of the German people's blood"states. Gondor's hero Aragorn is descended from Elendil, who had

founded the empire three thousand years before, in "a long line

unbroken." Endogenous procreation should prevent degeneration,

deterioration, and diminishing.76 Aragorn should not marry down andwaste this genetic heritage. "Tall as the sea-kings of old, he stood aboveall that were near; ancient of days he seemed and yet in the flower of

manhood; and wisdom sat upon his brow, and strength and healing were

in his hands, and a light was about him" (947). That this masterful

superior human being resists all temptations, including to interminglewith a pretty girl of a minor race, is explained by Leg?las: "For is he not

of the children of L?thien? Never shall that line fail, though the years

may lengthen beyond count" (858).After the last battle has been decided, the king distributes the land in

the east, south, and west (947). The question of who will rule Middle

earth is decided. As for the others, "[a]s when death smites the swollen

brooding thing that inhabits their crawling hill and holds them all insway, ants will wander witless and purposeless and then feeble die, so thecreatures of Sauron, ore or troll or beast spell-enslaved,

ran hither and

thither mindless; and some slew themselves, or cast themselves in pits,or

fled wailing back to hide in holes and dark lightless places far from

hope" (928). Thus, at last, the other is exterminated or expelled from

the realm of Gondor, and peace can follow at last?as a consequence of

total warfare. What creature or beast ever might still be hiding in a holeor a pit will be hunted down. Middle-earth will be cleansed of the total

foe, and the boundaries will not let any new peril inside the realm's

political body again now that it is healthy, strong, and pure once more.Gondor's peace is a peace of strictly separated greater regions with

guarded borders. The victorious king Aragorn gives the region of

Dr?adan "for ever" to his new inhabitants, adding, "and hereafter let no

man enter it without their leave" (954).

Popular media are "mapping" and guiding our ways of "viewing and

confronting the collective Other," as Jameson puts it (3). One has to

take this into account if one notices that The Lord of the Rings is the most

popular book in Germany. Causes for this success lie in the book and in

its readers. In thespecific

case of a German audience I would like to

state that a complete geopolitical discourse has survived the Reich's

"downfall" in the genres of the popular. And the tremendoussuccess of

Tolkien's books and Jackson's movie adaptations in Germany suggeststhe very disturbing question of whether this discourse of race and space


8/13/2019 20057890

18/21


is shaping our "geopolitical unconsciousness" again, making us wonder

what new "applications" will follow.

Ruhr University Bochum

NOTES

1 "Borders are peripheral organs of a state and nation," argues Friedrich Ratzel, in

Politische Geographie, 3rd ed. (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1923), 435. The biological perspectiveon political geography allows Ratzel to declare it as quite natural that

a border could

"move on," "extend," "shorten," or "grow," like a more or less healthy organism. The

judicial and mathematical concept of borders as lines is absolutely to the contrary. Ifa

"healthy" society grows and extends its periphery, both concepts conflict. The metaphor is

perfect for political propaganda because it naturalizes aggression. Translations from

German are my own. I would like to thank Fabian Lettow and Kristin Niendorf for their

help.2 Karl Schl?gel, Im R?ume lesen mir die Zeit: ?ber Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik

(Munich: Hanser, 2003), 12.

3 Schl?gel, Im R?ume, 471.

4 Cf. Rudolf Stichweh, Die Weltgesellschaft: Soziologische Analysen (Frankfurt am Main:

Suhrkamp, 2000) ;Helmut Willke, Atopia: Studien zur utopischen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am

Main: Suhrkamp, 2001); and Norbert Bolz, Weltkommunikation (Munich: Fink, 2001).

5 All the best-selling novels of Hans Dominik from the 1930s and '40s, which employNazi geopolitical and biopolitical semantics, were reedited after the war without any

problem, because they are considered science fiction or fantasy. This is only one example;the "Perry Rhodan" saga is another.

6 Fredric Jameson, The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System

(London: British Film Institute, 1992), 3.

7 This was not unfamiliar at all to contemporary British thinking during the 1930s and

'40s. Cf. Christian Rammer Reinhard Zeilinger, ed., Geopolitik, vol. 14 (Vienna: Promedia,

2001).8 Cf. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Die souver?ne Macht und das nackte Leben (Frankfurtam Main: Suhrkamp, 2002). See also Agamben, Was von Auschwitz bleibt (Frankfurt am

Main: Suhrkamp, 2003).

9 Carl Schmitt is quoting leading biologists. Carl Schmitt, V?lkerrechtliche Gro?traumordnungmit Interventionsverbot f?r raumfremde M?chte (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1991), 80-81.

10 For a short tour of Tolkien's creation, visit http://www.lordotrings.com/noflash/tourtot/

tourtot.asp. For a systematic list of all races, places, animals, and plants, see http://

www.glyphweb. com /arda/11 Cf. Gertraud Haase-Bessell, 'Volk und Rasse in ihren Beziehungen zueinander,"

Z?tschriftf?r Geopolitik 16, no. 8-9 (1939): 657-74.

12 To use the terms of Nazi biopolitics. Cf. Haase-Bessell, "Volk und Rasse," 661.

13 John Ronald Reul Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (London: HarperCollins, 1995), 529,

532 (hereafter cited in text).14 To clean the Realm of Rohan from any living Ore is a mission objective in the

computer game"Battle for Middle-earth."

15 Wilhelm II and Joseph Goebbels used this dictum in their war speeches. Within the

context of their discourse, "no pardon" meant that no foe will be taken as POW; everyfiend will be killed. "None of the Ores will ever return out of Lorien," the Elf Haldir saysas he explains battle tactics. An enemy knowing that will take measures accordingly.

Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 336.


8/13/2019 20057890

19/21


16 Cf. HansKelsen,

Peacethrough

Law(New

York and London:Garland, 1973).

Tokeep

mankind from war, Kelsen proposes a complex order of international contracts and

treaties. His whole argument supposes that no foe is ever excluded from mankind or

humanity. But that was the very case in World War II. Discriminating the other as "pest,"Schmitt writes, justifies his killing by any means necessary, even beyond the laws and

conventions of war. Thus, the dictum tantum licet in bello justo unfolds a disastrous

consequence, if the attacker believes in his attack as a bellum iustum against an unjust

enemy, who therefore doesn't count as equal and therefore could be easily be excluded

from mankind?as pest or carrion. Cf. Schmitt, Der Nomos der Erde (Berlin: Duncker und

Humblot, 1997), 299.

17 Cf. Agamben, Homo Sacer.

18 Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1991), 55.

19 And not social or religious communities, warriors, hired "soldiers of fortune,"

warlords, mafia militia, or terrorists. Cf. John Keegan, A History of Warfare (London:

Pimlico, 1994); and Herfried M?nckler, Die neuen Kriege (Reinbeck: Rowohlt, 2004).20 Beyond the realm of the European ius gentium, the non-European was slaughtered and

treated at the captors' will. Only European sovereigns and powers respected each other as

equals, and therefore stuck to certain duel-like rules and codes in warfare. Cf. Schmitt, Der

Nomos der Erde.

21 Cf. Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Der Krieg: Geschichte und Gegenwart (Frankfurt am Main:

Campus, 2003), 228-33.

22 Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, 55.

23 Cf. Schmitt, Die Wendung zum diskriminierenden Kriegsbegriff (Berlin: Duncker und

Humblot, 1989).24 Tolkien, Das Silmarrilion (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1983), 260-61.

25 "Alles, was Leben hat, nahm an jenem Tage Partei, und von jeder Art, selbst von den

Tieren und V?geln, fanden sich manche auf beiden Seiten, die Eiben allein ausgenommen"

(Tolkien, Das Silmarrilion, 322).26 Cf. Ernst J?nger, "Die totale Mobilmachung," S?mtliche Werke: Essay I: Betrachtungen zur

Zeit, vol. 7 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1980), 125-26. Not only armies or defense industries, but

every recourse, every "atom" of the political body, is mobilized for total warfare (128).

27 Cf. Carl Schmitt, "Das neue Vae Neutris ," Positionen und Begriffe im Kampf mit Weimar

Genf-Versailles (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1988).28 In German, carrion could be translated as "Kadaver." Agamben points out that from

German troops in World War II blind obedience was recommended. The term is called

"Kadavergehorsam": literally, "obedience of carrion." So, the Nazi leadership saw theirtroops as living dead, or "carrion." See Agamben, Was von Auschwitz bleibt, 68-69. In 1944,

Ernst J?nger observed that the inferior one is "destroyed as vermin" as a result of the total

war. See J?nger, "Der Friede," S?mtliche Werke: Essay I: Betrachtungen zur Zeit, vol. 7

(Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1980), 199.

29 ". . . bis zur Vernichtung allen lebensunwerten Lebens." Carl Schmitt, Theorie des

Partisanen (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1992), 95.

30 Agamben, Homo Sacer, 81. In total warfare, Agamben's exceptional state becomes

"normal" and lasting.31 Cf. J?nger, "Der Friede," 199.

32 Tolkien, Nachrichten aus Mittelerde, trans. HansJ. Sch?tz (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1983),485. "When Brego and Aldor were kings, the Dunlanders were eradicated or expelledfrom the realm. They get exterminated, and their living space is looted and plundered by

Rohan Riders as a 'retaliatory measure'" (487). This term is significant. As Kelsen shows,measures of total warfare are considered opportune and legal if they are "retaliatory."

"What otherwise would be a violation of international law, is, according to the same

international law, permitted as reprisal." Kelsen, Peace through Law, 107.


8/13/2019 20057890

20/21


33 Also Trolls, who had "no morelanguage

than beasts." That "Sauron bred them none

doubted." Trolls were "a fell race, strong, agile, fierce and cunning, but harder than stone"

(Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 1106). They may be understood as a complementary race to

the Dwarfs, as Ores are to Uruk-Hais and Men are to Elves.

34 Cf. the tractate on "Gro?raumordnungfrom" from SS-Brigadef?hrer Dr. jur. Werner

Best in Festgabe f?r Heinrich Himmler (Darmstadt: Wittich, 1941). Every "inferior Slavic race"

east of Great Germany will cease to exist, as a result of ongoing and future SS politics, the

jurist explains. Tolkien uses the term "easterling" similarly to the way Nazi officials

referred to "ostische Rassen."

35 Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage, 1994), 178-79, 182.

36 Cf. Gilles Deleuze and F?lix Guattari, Tausend Plateaus (Berlin: Merve, 1997), 334.

37 J?nger, "Der Friede," 199.

38 In 1920, the biologist Jakob von Uexk?ll published his "Biology of the State." In a

chapter on "parasitic diseases" of the body of the state/people he discusses measures to

extinguish inner parasites of foreign races and to avert outside dangers (intruders). A

weak state easily would be conquered or destroyed by its inner parasites and enemies from

outside. Uexk?ll pleads for a strict border regime of an ethnically homogeneous nation to

prevent those diseases. This argumentation implies the extermination of the other. See

Jakob von Uexk?ll, Staatsbiologie (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1933). Uexk?ll's

publishing house also edited Schmitt's "Concept of the Political" and Ernst Forsthoff s

book The Total State.

39 Cf. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (London: Penguin, 1994); and Niels Werber,"German Death Star in Orbit," Soziale Systeme, Heft 2 (Stuttgart: Lucius Se Lucius, 2003):257-71.

40 Tolkien, Nachrichten aus Mittelerde, 501. In J?nger's view total warfare is understood as

a global process of selection in a Darwinian sense. Cf. J?nger, "Die totale Mobilmachung,"130.

41 Ernst J?nger, Der Arbeiter: Herrschaft und Gestalt (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1982).42 Paul Virilio, Geschwindigkeit und Politik (Berlin: Merve, 1980), 94.

43 The machine gun, war hero and author J?nger states, calls for another type of soldier,who is not the bourgeois individual, but an obedient warrior of total wars. See J?nger, Der

Arbeiter, 109 and following pages.44 Jameson, The Geopolitical Aesthetic, 3.

45 Jameson, The Geopolitical Aesthetic, 3 (my italics).46 Rachel Lee, "The Seat of Kings," http://www.seatofkings.net/ (accessed April 24, 2005).47

Stephen Shapiro,"Rassismus im Herrn der

Ringe,"Der

Spiegel 52 (2002).48 Cf. Martin Stingelin, ed., Biopolitik und Rassismus (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,2003).49 Igor Djadan, "The Cult of Good," Russian Journal (March 26, 2002), http://

english.russ.ru/politics/20020326.html (accessed April 24, 2005).50 Cf. Ludwig Dehio, Gleichgewicht oder Hegemonie: Betrachtungen ?ber ein Grundproblem der

neueren Staatengeschichte (Krefeld: Scherpe, 1948).51 For examples of this anti-Slavic discourse see Dehio, Gleichgewicht oder Hegemonie.52 Cf. Schmitt, V?lkerrechtliche Gro?raumordnung, and Hauke Brunkhorst, "The Right to

War: Hegemonial Geopolitics or Civic Constitutionalism?" Constellations 11, no. 4 (2004):532-26.

53 Cf. Walter Lippmann, U.S. Foreign Policy and U.S. War Aims (USA Overseas Edition,

1943-44).54 Samuel P. Huntington (The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order [NewYork: Simon and Schuster, 1996]) figures as a key authority in Russian geopolitical

thinking. See also Dirk Kretzschmar and Niels Werber, "Zwischen Globalisierung und

Geopolitik: Regionale Beobachtungen der Weltgesellschaft durch die politische Semantik


8/13/2019 20057890

21/21


am Beispiel der USA und Russlands," in Soziale Systeme: Zeitschrift f?r soziologische Theorie,Heft 1 (Stuttgart: Lucius & Lucius, 2001): 190-204.

55 Igor Djadan, "The Cult of Good," Russian fournal (March 26, 2002), http://english.russ.ru/

politicsZ20020326.html (accessed April 24, 2005).56 Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 209, 218; 405. Anduin is named "the River of Gondor,"

who "will take care" of dead Boromir "that no evil creature dishonours his bones." This

river as well can discern friends from foes.

57 Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, 26: The "genuine political differentiation" is the

"distinction between friend and foe."

58 Ratzel, Mensch und Erde, 44 (hereafter cited in text as ME).59 Cf. chapters 17-19 on borders, in Ratzel, Politische Geographie. Ratzel understands the

border of a state as an organ that regulates the cross-border exchange, letting some peopleand goods in and repelling the unwanted rest. Its function is to select and to protect.60 In Russia and in Germany it is an assumption widely shared that the vast Russian spaceand the cold Russian winter beat the German Wehrmacht. Schmitt calls this support that

a belligerent faction receives from the native soil "tellurian." Cf. Schmitt, Theorie des

Partisanen, 28 and following pages.61 Ratzel, Anthropogeographie: 2 B?nde (Stuttgart: Engelhorn, 1882-91).62 Schmitt, V?lkerrechtliche Gro?raumordnung, 79-80.

63 Kurt Vowinckel, ed., Fernwirkungen deutscher Geopolitik: Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag von

Karl Haushofer, vol. 8-9 (Heidelberg: Verlag, 1939).64 Schmitt is quoting very advanced biologists to assist his concept of a geo- and

biopolitical space. Cf. Schmitt, V?lkerrechtliche Gro?raumordnung, 80-81.

65 Cf. Uexk?ll, Staatsbiologie, and Schmitt, Der Nomos der Erde.66 Cf. Niels Werber, "'Der Gott der Materie': Amerika als Phantasma deutscher Autoren,"

Komparatistik: fahrbuch der Deutschen Gesellschaft f?r Allgemeine und Vergleichende

Literaturwissenschaft (2002-2003): 115 and following pages.67 Vowinckel, Fernwirkungen deutscher Geopolitik, 638 and following pages.68 Tolkien, Nachrichten aus Mittelerde, 348.

69 Schmitt, V?lkerrechtliche Gro?raumordnung, 63.

70 Cf. Lippmann, U.S. Foreign Policy and U.S. War Aims, 239.

71 Samuel P. Huntington, Kampf der Kulturen: Die Neugestaltung der Weltpolitik im 21.

fahrhundert (Munich: Siedler bei Goldmann, 1998), 522; see note 53 for English edition.

72 Schmitt, V?lkerrechtliche Gro?raumordnung, 82.

73 Schmitt, V?lkerrechtliche Gro?raumordnung, 62-63.

74 Cf. Vowinckel, Fernwirkungen deutscher Geopolitik, 688.

75 Haase-Bessell, 'Volk und Rasse in ihren Beziehungen zueinander," 661.

76 Uexk?ll in his Biology of the State warns the German nation against any mixed

marriages. Uexk?ll, Staatsbiologie, 75.

Documents

20057890