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Joel Fagerberg 22 March 2015 Eastern European Literature and Cinema Alexandar Mihailovic

Resisting the Grand March: Kitsch, Spectacle, and the Body in Milan Kundera’s The

Unbearable Lightness of Being

I. Introduction

Understood as “...the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative sense of

the word,” kitsch creates the illusion of a shitless reality (Milan Kundera The Unbearable

Lightness of Being 248). The Grand March mobilizes kitsch: all personal and public activity is

rendered anew in the image of a dominant, sentimental, dogmatic narrative of progress in

motion. The Grand March is defined (with tongue firmly in cheek, albeit) by the narrator of The

Unbearable Lightness of Being as “...the splendid march on the road to brotherhood, equality,

justice, happiness” (ibid 257). In a conceptual sense, kitsch therefore is a characteristic feature of

the Grand March: nothing is shitty (and thus reality is shitless) because all of human existence

can be tackled from the perspective of an ideology that supposedly guarantees advancement.

This kitsch, narrative framework of the Grand March comes to life in political marches, events

which act to embody and display a consensus among the masses in regards to an ideology of

progression.

With kitsch as its wellspring, the Grand March establishes conformity: intersubjectivity is

usurped by dogmatic adherence to the narrative of progress. History and individual actions are

both made to conform to this narrative. Corporeal reality thus becomes a prisoner to the Grand

March: all human bodies in history are seen as slaves to the engine of progress, all human bodies

in the present are forced to display themselves as a mass of loyal adherents to an ideology of

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progress. Simply put, the body is pressured to conform to demands of the Grand March. In

Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the body thus becomes the major site for

resistance against the oppressive, spectacular kitsch of the Grand March. Sabina, Tomas, and

Tereza attempt to refuse the demands of the Grand March through approaches that are grounded

in a reclaiming of their corporeal agency. Each of these characters comes to view their own body

as the primary site for personally responding to the public demands of politics.

The corporeal focus underlying the actions of Sabina, Tomas, and Tereza ultimately

connects them to a particular strain of philosophy that dates back to the work of Friedrich

Nietzsche. Nietzsche once wrote that one should “...proceed from the body and to use it as the

guiding thread,” a recommendation which has been taken up further by subsequent generations

of thinkers, from Michel Foucault to Judith Butler (Friedrich Nietzsche Nietzsche: Writings from

the Late Notebooks 43). Following a trajectory from Tomas’ varied sexual conquests towards the

pre­modern, rural form of life that he takes up with Tereza at the end of the novel, the reader

may see a straightforward interpretation of Nietzsche’s advice echoing through Tomas’

hedonism as well as his idyllic return with Tereza to nature.. However, the reader may see a

different, more nuanced response to Nietzsche’s advice in the actions of Sabina. Whereas Tomas

and Tereza takes up the body as a familiar ground for escaping the pressures of politics, Sabina

comes to see her body as an ultimately unknowable source of power that may restore her agency

in the face of the oppressive, spectacular kitsch of the Grand March.

II. The Oppressive, Spectacular Kitsch of the Grand March

In order to better understand kitsch, the Grand March, and the relationship between the

two in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, it would certainly be helpful to compare Sabina to

one of her lovers, Franz. Whereas Sabina detests and resists kitsch, Franz performs and

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succombs to it: his fantasies of the Grand March intoxicate him with kitsch visions of human

solidarity and progress that eventually lead him towards his own death. On the other hand,

Sabina declares kitsch the primary enemy of her art work and survives the novel (Kundera The

Unbearable Lightness of Being 254). Though the narrator (perhaps, yet again, with tongue firmly

in cheek) writes that “Franz was obviously not a devotee of kitsch,” he remains touched by the

shitless fantasy the Grand March provides. Sabina, in contrast, was driven to hide the fact that

she is Czech as a “...desperate attempt to escape the kitsch that people wanted to make of her

life” by constantly identifying her and her art work with the position of the Czech people in the

Grand March (ibid).

The narrator states that “It is always nice to dream that we are part of a jubilant throng

marching through the centuries, and Franz never quite forgot the dream” (ibid 258). With this

saccharine notion in mind, Franz travels to Cambodia to participate in a comically vain display

of Western political kitsch: a public march against the Vietnamese occupiers complete with a

media frenzy and self­righteous celebrities. Franz dies shortly after the protest due to a violent

incident with a Cambodian thief. His death is marked by both the false, sentimental image of

himself in his former mistress Sabina’s eyes as a tough man which motivates him to hopelessly

fight back, and by the false, sentimental tale of repentance spun by his wife in the after he passes

(ibid 258­276). Drawn in by the kitsch characteristics of the Grand March, Franz is brought to

his own demise. Thereafter, he is subjugated to the realm of kitsch by his wife’s saccharine lies.

The Grand March relies on kitsch as its aesthetic ideal, employing it as a lens through

which identities and bodies may become subjugated in a spectacle of sentimental playacting.

Even when the ideological and physical manifestations of the Grand March appear to be failing,

as is the case at the end of the event in Cambodia, the spectacular nature of such a public display

of kitsch spurs Franz and others like him onward. Kundera writes: “Yes, the Grand March was

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coming to an end, but was that any reason for Franz to betray it?...Who was he to jeer at the

exhibitionism of the people accompanying the courageous doctors to the border? What could

they all do but put on a show?” (ibid 267). In essence, Franz loves to be seen. Whether it is the

reality of his student mistress “...looking up at him, her eyes magnified by the big round lenses in

her glasses” or the thought of Sabina gazing “...down on him enraptured” in an imagined scene

of their reunification, Franz enjoys putting himself on display for others (ibid 259).

This notion of taking part in a spectacle speaks to a specific experience of kitsch which

powers the Grand March. The appearance of progress, and the exhibition of one’s role in that

progress, relies on the seduction of displays to override doubts that may prevent one from taking

part in the spectacle of the Grand March. Franz’s attraction to the oppressive kitsch of the Grand

March is maintained by his attraction to the spectacle. Guy Debord in The Society of the

Spectacle defines the spectacle as a “...social relationship between people that is mediated by

images” (Guy Debord The Society of the Spectacle 2). Moreover, Debord also mentions that

“The whole life of those societies in which the modern conditions of production prevail presents

itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that was once directly lived has become

mere representation” (ibid). Franz certainly is a victim of this Society of the Spectacle, living his

affluent European life in terms of kitsch representations which eventually define his downfall.

This oppressive, spectacular form of kitsch crosses political and geographic boundaries:

Sabina detests the American Senator’s over­sentimentality towards his children as much as she

does the Soviet kitsch dominating the theatres of her own country (Kundera The Unbearable

Lightness of Being 249­253). That is because in both cases, the spectacles of kitsch dominate all

facets of life with sentimentality in service of an ideological master. In both cases, it is a dubious

relationship to death which results from this sentimentality, one in which “kitsch is a folding

screen set up to curtain off death” (ibid 253). As kitsch instills the illusion of a shitless reality, a

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double relationship is established to death. Death is at once curtained off and hastened forward,

as is made clear by the narrator in regards to Tereza’s recurring dream:

“The feeling Soviet kitsch evoked in Sabina strikes me as much like the horror Tereza experienced in her dream of being marched around a swimming pool with a group of naked women and forced to sing cheerful songs with them while corpses floated just below the surface of the pool” (ibid).

The fact that death looms over Tereza’s recurring dream, as well as the fact that Soviet kitsch

does not acknowledge death in the lives of its people, indicates that the spectacle of the Grand

March leads to an oppressive, life­threatening scenario.

More confirmation is found in regards to this critical view of the Grand March by way of

the narrator’s remarks concerning the history of the Czech people, with specific references made

to the Second Defenestration of Prague and the Munich Conference of 1938. The former event

was an act of rebellion on the part of Catholic Czech estates against the Protestant Emperor in

1618, the latter signified the capitulation of the Czech territory to Hitler’s Nazi Germany. The

narrator notes that in the former case: “Their defiance led to the Thirty Years War, which in turn

led to the almost complete destruction of the Czech nation. Should the Czechs have show more

caution than courage? The answer may seem simple; it is not” (ibid 223). Regarding the latter

case, he posits the following passage: “Should the Czechs have tried to stand up to a power eight

times their size? In contrast to 1618, they opted for caution. Their capitulation led to the Second

World War, which in turn led to the forfeit of their nations freedom for many decades or even

centuries” (ibid). The history of the Czech people appears therefore as a paradox, one which

befuddles the simple narrative of progress and political development posited by the Grand

March. Across centuries, whether opting for courage or caution, the Czechs have found

themselves trampled over by the so­called proponents of historical progress.

III. The Body as a Site of Resistance for Sabina, Tomas, and Tereza

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In order to respond to the oppressive, spectacular kitsch of the Grand March, what do

Sabina, Tomas, and Tereza do? How can they avoid being trampled over, like so many others in

the course of human history, by the standard bearers of the Grand March? It would perhaps seem

that, based on the relationship between Tereza’s recurring dream and Soviet kitsch, a full­throttle

embrace of death would be the only appropriate response. This seems self­defeating: to engage

in some Heideggerian notion of being­towards­death means, in this case, accepting that you will

fall victim to the oppressive, spectacular kitsch of the Grand March. Therefore, these characters

turn to a different solution. In general, these characters ground themselves in their bodies, in the

corporeality of everyday life, as a site of resistance. It is not simply an acknowledgement of

death which is called for. Instead, it is a reclaimed relationship with corporeality (as Nietzsche

wisely suggested), the crux of our mortality but also the source of our lived experience, that

defines the challenge that these three characters pose to the Grand March.

This corporeal basis for Sabina, Tomas, and Tereza’s resistance to the Grand March may

be noted in a passage from another text by Milan Kundera. In his essay “Die Weltliteratur,”

Kundera details his response to a Parisian friend of his who was trying to pigeonhole his artistic

identity according to the political plight of his country’s people. He writes: “Eager to drive off

the kitsch of those solemn spectres, I started describing how the fact of being followed, of having

police microphones in our apartments, had taught us the delicate art of the hoax” (Milan Kunder

“Die Weltliteratur” 35). The specific hoax to which he is referring included switching apartments

with a friend, with the ultimate purpose being to allow his friend to engage in his various sexual

exploits in an apartment which was not under his name (ibid). This would render the surveillance

information gained about the friend’s relationships essentially untethered to his actual identity. In

this way, one may see how Kundera is detailing a humorous but effective example of the

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importance of reclaiming sexuality, and by extension, one’s body and one’s identity, from the

interests of ideologues.

Tomas’ corporeal efforts to resist the Grand March appear in the form of continuous lust

at first. In his pursuit of new sexual conquests, Tomas was seeking something which is directly

opposed to the oppressive, spectacular kitsch of the Grand March. The narrator notes that, for

Tomas, sex is so valuable because “There is always the small part that is unimaginable...between

the approximation of the idea and the precision of reality was a small gap of the unimaginable”

(Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being 199). The narrator then goes on to proclaim that

“What is unique about the ‘I’ hides itself exactly what is unimaginable about a person. All we are

able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The

individual ‘I’ is what differs from the common stock...what cannot be calculated” (ibid). The

oppressive, spectacular kitsch of the Grand March cannot acknowledge this hidden, incalculable

difference between individuals in its criterion for visible, unanimous belief in the ideology at

hand. It also cannot acknowledge the fact that this incalculable difference may be conquered

between individuals themselves, a suggestion which is in direct opposition to the presumption

that there are no differences to be settled, let alone in such a way which would upset the

optimistic sentimentality of kitsch social relations.

By the end of the novel, Tomas is living a rural lifestyle with Tereza, with much of the

closing section focusing on their relationship with the natural world as exemplified through their

dying dog Karenin. As Tereza pets her sick dog’s head, she has the thought that “There’s no

particular merit in being nice to one’s fellow man” (ibid 289). The narrator then notes that

“Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of

its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered

a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it” (ibid). These

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thoughts indicate that Tomas and Tereza’s return to the country is motivated by an attempt to

respond to this human debacle. The narrator goes on to reference Nietzsche’s mental breakdown

at a hotel in Turn that took place in 1889, an incident in which Nietzsche attempted to protect a

horse from the whip of a coachman. Kundera writes: “...that is the Nietzsche I love, just as I love

Tereza with the mortally ill dog resting his head in her lap. I see them one next to the other: both

stepping down from the road along which mankind...marches onward” (ibid 290). This provides

strong evidence that Tomas and Tereza are returning to an idyllic, rural relationship with animals

and nature at large as a way to escape the pressures of continuing the Grand March. In this

context, corporeality is connected to a stable, familiar relationship with one’s own body and all

forms of life on Earth.

Sabina’s turn to the body is more nuanced in its application because it does not turn to a

stable state of corporeality, favoring instability instead. Whereas Tomas finds himself fascinated

by the opportunity to conquer the unimaginable in others, Sabina prides herself on relishing in

the unimaginable without having to conquer it. The narrator notes that “...the true opponent of

totalitarian kitsch is the person who asks questions,” and it is certainly true that Sabina was more

attracted to the lightness of questions than the heaviness of answers when it came to her body

(ibid 254).. Her fondness for the bowler hat during times of sexual activity represents her

attraction to the instability that underlies the following question: what will it signify this time?

Kundera writes that “The bowler hat was a motif in the musical composition that was Sabina’s

life. It returned again and again, each time with a different meaning, and all the meanings flowed

through the bowler hat like water through a riverbed” (ibid 88). When Sabina would dawn the

bowler hat in front of Franz, he would become uncomfortable precisely because of “...its very

lack of meaning” (ibid). This is the key to Sabina’s corporeality: it reclaims the body through

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sexuality in unstable terms as a means of preserving the unimaginable in the face of totalitarian

kitsch.

In comparing Sabina’s turn to the body with that of Tomas and Tereza, one may notice a

divergence between two possible ways of utilizing one’s own corporeality as a site of resistance

to the Grand March. It begins with a shared insight, one that is summed up by Michel Foucault in

his “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” In this predictably Nietzsche­esque text, Foucault writes

that “The body is the inscribed surface of events (traced by language and dissolved by ideas),”

while pointing towards his central task of exposing “...a body totally imprinted by history and the

process of history’s destruction of the body” (Michel Foucault “Nietzsche, Genealogy History”

83). From this elaboration on the Nietzschean linchpin of corporeality arises an intriguing

question, one that signifies the possibility of these characters’ approaches. Judith Butler, in

following the train of thought from Nietzsche through Foucault, captures this question when she

writes: “The critical question that emerges from these considerations is whether the

understanding of the process of cultural construction on the model of "inscription"... entails that

the "constructed" or "inscribed" body have an ontological status apart from that inscription”

(Judith Butler “Foucault and the Paradox of Bodily Inscriptions” 603).

Tomas and Tereza would seem to believe that the body does have an ontological status

apart from that inscription. Their return to the corporeality of rural life approaches the body, in

both human and animal forms, as something that can be reclaimed and protected from the

process of inscription itself. On the other hand, Sabina’s view of her own body follows in step

with her bowler hat obsession, thus speaking to an overarching theme of unstable lightness in the

absence of stable, heavy definitions. This theme carries over into the will she composes, in which

she requests to be cremated (Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being 273). Elaborating on

this decision, the narrator notes that “She wanted to die under the sign of lightness. She would be

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lighter than air” (ibid). Sabina’s desire to be ultimately lighter than air suggests an approach to

the body in which it is not seen as having an ontological status prior to the act of inscription.

When Butler asks the reader to consider, “..if the very notion of the body as surface externally

related to the act of inscription [may be] subjected to a genealogical critique,” she is asking a

question which also shapes Sabina’s desire for lightness. For Sabina, the body and its sexuality

have “...no magical or ontotheological origins” but are, instead, amenable to questions and

instability (Butler 607).

Sabina’s relationship to her body, and thus her sexuality and identity, resists attempts at

inscription. Much like her favorite bowler hat, Sabina herself allows her corporeality to be

continually reinterpreted in such a way that challenges the Grand March’s assumption of a linear

path towards progress. This assumption, which drives the Grand March onward, calls for the

construction of identities that are fixed in their agreement with the narrative of historical

progress. Bodies, personal agency, sexuality, and identity are subsumed under a shared

obligation to the Grand March’s ideological underpinnings.

Thus Sabina’s turn to the body connects to yet another Nietzschean insight: historical

progress is a myth which demands an artificial stabilization of meaning. Nietzsche stated that

“the whole history of a ‘thing’... can to this extent be a continuous chain of signs, continually

revealing new interpretations and adaptations, the causes of which need not be connected even

amongst themselves, but rather sometimes just follow and replace one another at random”

(Friedrich Nietzsche On the Genealogy of Morality 51). Sabina relishes in the revealing of new

interpretations and adaptations of her body, an experience which becomes a powerful form of

resistance against the Grand March.

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IV. Conclusion

In response to the oppressive, spectacular kitsch of the Grand March, Sabina, Tomas, and

Tereza turn to the body as a site of resistance. Their ability to take ownership of their own

corporeality and to resist the demands for public sentimentality which characterize the Grand

March come to represent an insight into the importance of the body and personal sexuality in

challenging kitsch. As Nietzsche wrote in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “There is more wisdom in

your body than in your deepest philosophy” (Friedrich Nietzsche Thus Spoke Zarathustra 32).

From this wisdom arises two potential types of understandings of the body which are pursued by

Sabina on the one hand and Tomas/Tereza on the other. Tomas and Tereza take up a view of the

body in which it claims a definitive ontology, characterized by their return to the corporeality of

pre­modernity. Sabina approaches the body without this definitive ontology, reclaiming her own

physicality in order to preserve it’s lightness and lack of meaning. In both cases, the oppressive,

spectacular kitsch of the Grand March is challenged by the efforts of these characters to free their

corporeality from a prison of saccharine, public displays of belief in the illusion of human

progress.

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Work Cited

Butler, Judith. “Foucault and the Paradox of Bodily Inscriptions.” The Journal of Philosophy.

86.11 (1989): 601­607. Web.

Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone, 1994. Web.

Foucault, Michel. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” The Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul Rabinow.

New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. 76­100. Web.

Kundera, Milan. “Die Weltliteratur.” The New Yorker. 8 (2007): 28­35). Web.

Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Trans. Michael Henry Heim. New York:

Harper Perennial, 1991. Print.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. Ed. Keith Ansell­Pearson. Trans. Carol

Diethe. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994. Web.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Trans. Walter

Kaufmann. New York: Penguin, 1995. Print.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Writings from the Late Notebooks. Ed. Rüdiger Bittner. Cambridge:

Cambridge UP, 2003. Print.

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