This post is about the dialectics of liberation. Carles takes advantage of some provocative comments by a popular multi-ethnic hip-hop artist M.I.A. to investigate the possibilities for countercultural revolution within the given hegemonic power structure, the so-called pax Americana that has prevailed since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc alternative. Americans are burdened with the albatross of globalization and proselytization of their supposed exceptionalism: "We can never forget who we are as a nation, and our special mission as ‘the best nation in the World.’" In order to challenge this habit of thinking, Americans must be woken from their dream of dominance carefully, must be brought to accept cosmopolitanism without reawakening a dormant tribalism forgotten as unnecessary in their supposed supremacy. We are backed in a corner with few choices for self-actualization: "You are either a patriot or a terrorist–there is nothing in between," Carles notes ruefully.
Carles points out that M.I.A.'s comments about Barack Obama's having won the Nobel Peace Prize suggest she is "talking mad shit" that displays her ignorance. On the face of things, it apppears Carles is criticizing M.I.A. when he states that "It seems like M.I.A. is ‘trying to take a shit’ on our nation/our leader/etc."
Bu that would be a superficial understanding. Carles may have in mind the problem of developing organic intellectuals without alienating would-be fellow travelers on the road to revolution. As Theodore Roszak noted in The Making of a Counter Culture, "The young, miserably educated as they are, bring with them almost nothing but healthy instincts. The project of building a sophisticated framework of thought atop those instincts is rather like trying to graft an oak tree upon a wildflower." Carles is asking, How can we follow M.I.A.'s crude lead in questioning the American hegemony without alienating the Americans whose cooperation will be necessary to change that country's politics? "It seems like making anti-Obama statements might diminish her appeal to liberal alts," he notes.
In order to engender truly epochal revolutionary change rather than the "peace" -- the maintenance of the status quo -- for which Obama has been amply rewarded, we must learn to subvert awards, detourn them along the lines of Debord and the situationists, as Carles recommends: "Think I might start an ‘awards system’ for some sort of alternative genre, and maybe it will appear to be ‘more real’ over time." The very idea of an award will become indubitably contested to the point in which it connotes honor and opprobrium in equal measure.
At that point we can honor ourselves for patriotism by undermining the supremacy of nations, and M.I.A.'s dream of disengagement from the institutionalized community of peace manufacturing and its ideological props and award ceremonies will become superfluous. Prizes will mean everything and nothing, they will be open to our interpretation and consumption as memes rather than memories.
Feel like the New World order - in the sense of a one-dimensionality in the 'creation' of a positive devoid of negativity (where the negative is not gone, but rather 'painted over' by the positive (like a computer generated image) - can only be 'combated' by a primal scene, a primal event, an instinctual transparition of negativety/evil. Feel like the spectacle is lost as spectacle and all that is left to the New World is a hyperreal dream state. Feel, twofold, like 'terrorism' (hence the superb title) aims at creating a primal spectacle, where the 'good' are awakened from their coma and see that 'evil/negativity' hasn't gone anywhere, and is rather hyperexistent. It is the order of the New World's duty as repressor (not oppressor) to delete 'terror/evil' from the world. The illusion of hyperobjectivity vs. the 'all-too-transparent' hyperprimitivity. Peace/humanitarianism is the mask of the violent, hegemonic crusades of objectivity, that we all-too-objectively expect to meet it in peace/humanely. We are fooled by 'revolution' (which is the faculty of this hyperobjectivism) when it is our dissatisfaction with New World globalized prophylactical-idealism that calls for "re-involution".
ReplyDelete'Objectivity' and 'hyperobjectivity' is what sense, exactly?
ReplyDeleteI can take an educated guess, but would like you to elaborate before I make a response to your comment.
Objectivity in an ironic sense. Hyperobjectivity in the sense of a superfluity in the mass information of 'objectivity'. I guess in short I comment on the faithfulness of the workability of 'truth' - operationalization of a belief perhaps. Suppose the Crusades, but instead of the metastasis (through scattered networking, and unspecialized technique) of faith in God, the metastasis (through the complete interconnectivity/interactivity of networking, and all-too-specialized/ nano-specialized technique) of faith in 'objective rationalism' or the 'perfect doubling' of such through scientific technique and virtual technology. Suppose also that we trade (through technique and technology) 'the world that thinks us' for 'its technological, virtual double that thinks us'. From my perspective, we set a trap for ourselves through converting metaphorical sign-value to 'real possibility' - the realization of everything. I apologize for drifting off topic, but I feel like furthering the perspective perhaps better enables you to add to the theoretical discourse.
ReplyDeleteI'd be interested to hear more about 'the world that thinks us' v. 'its technological, virtual double that thinks us.' It seems like you could be making a Baudrillardian point here, and that also you're saying we need to be better Derrideans, but the word 'virtual' is tricky and I'm not sure what you mean by it. Do you mean simply virtual in, say, a Lacanian sense ('virtual' as immaterial, metaphysical, imaginary?), or are you referring specifically to contemporary constellations of computer and network technology (e.g. the internet, iphones, 'the media' as it exists across networked platforms,)?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, my response would be this - first, it's to say I think it's interesting that both your posts are built in relation to a West v. Muslims scenario (the war on terror in the first post and then the crusades in your second).
Second, it's to say I don't know that the spectacle is totally dead. 9/11? A spectacular simulacra? a hyper-spectacle? I'm not sure about what I feel qualifies something as a spectacle, but I am sure that this was an extraordinary and arresting visual event that situated the spectator in a very particular way. In some ways the war on terror, at least during the Bush years, can be thought of a war of competing spectacles: the world trade center countered by the statue of saddam being dragged down and the aircraft carrier bush appearance countered by the beheadings and the lynching of blackwater employees, etc. Yes, yes, perhaps these are not proper pure spectacle in the Guy Debord sense, and we encounter them through our hyper mediated soupy lives, etc. etc. but it's not clear to me the spectacle is totally gone. I'm not so sure that we're all hopelessly encased in a hyperreal dream state (though I like how you put this) by the mighty biopolitical machinations of contemporary global capitalism. It's a total system, perhaps, but not a perfect one, no? I don't know that we need to make concessions to it like this.
Respect. I wasn't sure how my madness of rhetoric would come off, I find it hard to establish wit over the internet. Virtual is meant here as the world of perceived appearances, the world of our 'theoretical/operational/factual/produced', almost 'formal' interpretation - where the simulated world becomes 'more real' than the tactile one (even more the simulated one becomes the tactile one 'par excellence'). I suppose if Integral Reality is a world where all is 'proven' (including 'Man') then the virtual world is the superimposition of the 'proofs' unto the world's 'perfect double'. Feel close to Baudrillard, yes (possibly merely for his closeness to Neitzsche), but even closer to the all-too-premature "Technological Society" of Jacques Ellul. A profound read - suprisingly written in 1954.
ReplyDeleteI was contrasting the West, but it was by accident to contrast it with Muslims specifically. 'Terrorism' is meant here merely as the backwards nations (even domestic crime itself) in general as an impedement to the globalization of 'democratic/liberal/modern' ideals i.e. the liberation of man from the 'old world'. A bit parodoxical considering he then becomes totally (not merely metaphorically) bound to this 'New World' (which is also the virtual world).
Also is was by accident stating that the spectacle is dead. For it is all-too-transparent to us critical observers, almost as though the world itself is spectacle, yet we cannot penetrate through the looking glass. Feel though as if it is lost to the masses as spectacle, for they are actors in the spectacle. Feel like the interactivity of the spectacle genetically-modifies it as something perpetually ante-spectacle - the spectacle does not permeate the masses if you will.
As for "re-involution" - a tough sell... Perhaps merely the ressurection of the world-as-is. Perhaps ending in a metaphysical rejoicing in the illusoriness of the world of the appearances. Perhaps a complete reversal of the spread of the 'good' (as the spread of the 'good' is simultaneously the spread of 'evil'). Perhaps it is the "Grand Refusal" of Marcuse - which is impossible without psychiatric hypermediation. Perhaps it is, as opposed to Ray Kurzweil's "singularity", a return to the primitive 'vacuum' of the world.
Not sure where this gets us, but I'm not even sure I want to 'change things' - just want to see the natural world perservere. Feel like I have my health; feel like the world is a satire that is my guilty pleasure to watch unfold; sometimes feel nauseated, sometimes feel pity, sometimes feel unconcerned, sometimes feel delighted and despotic. The world may be tragic/pitiable at times, but if we lose the absurdity of the masses, we lose also the laughability of the world. Might say the world thinks us to think it; might even say the world has a death drive?