GOODBYE, POST-MODERN NIHILISM?
THE EMPIRE OF BROKEN SIGNS
"Quand même nous serions comme la feuille morte,
Quand, pour plaire à César, on nous renîrait tous;
Quand le proscrit devrait s'enfuir de porte en porte,
Aux hommes déchiré comme un haillon aux clous [...]"
--Victor Hugo
"We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire."
--George Sand
"The War That Is 'Over' Needs To Be Stopped!" --Mort Subiet
/ Boot Hill Count (Third Page)
William Rivers Pitt, Discipline and Punish (Truthout, 04/03/07) ...MORE ABOUT NOTHING(NESS) - "Mr. Mohammed [Khalid Shaikh Mohammed] has become what the Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls ‘homo sacer’: a creature legally dead while biologically still alive. And he's not the only one living in an in-between world. The American authorities who deal with detainees have become a sort of counterpart to homo sacer: acting as a legal power, they operate in an empty space that is sustained by the law and yet not regulated by the rule of law […] This is why, in the end, the greatest victims of torture-as-usual are the rest of us, the informed public. A precious part of our collective identity has been irretrievably lost. We are in the middle of a process of moral corruption: those in power are literally trying to break a part of our ethical backbone, to dampen and undo what is arguably our civilization's greatest achievement, the growth of our spontaneous moral sensitivity." Slavoj Zizek, Knight of the Living Dead (The New York Times, 03/24/07)
PRESUMPTIVE HEIRS - The presumptive heirs to the plausible, but by no means guaranteed meltdown of the Republican Congress this fast-approaching November are not the feeble Democrats now counting coup, here and there, and now scrambling to position themselves as the saviors of the Republic. Bush long ago crossed the Rubicon (along with the vandals of the neoconservative Right). Instead, who might benefit from the Republican loss of the Senate or House (or both) is quite simply everyone and/or no one -- that is, the thing otherwise known as the American Republic.
The press is having a field day, including the liberal press that facilitated the Bush juggernaut in the first place, by vacating the premises -- leaving Truth behind for propaganda and face-saving gestures (including money-making, face-saving gestures best exemplified by The New York Times). Since Bush's first so-called electoral victory, and since most especially the Democratic loss of both chambers of the Congress, criticism (strident or otherwise) has been left to what's left of the Left (a locution that is always already necessary in a time when Capitalism owns all organs of speech and thought, and only tolerates dissent as a peculiar, titillating frisson on the margins and, in particular, in the nether regions of the Internet). Thus is constructed hegemony -- and thus is the endless endgame associated with defending hegemony.
Yes, the Republicans should go. Many should go to jail as well. In the Op-Ed pages of the aforementioned 'liberal' dailies we see mention of the extremely exciting possibility of that majestic thing called 'subpoena power', something a Democratic-controlled House or Senate would receive by default. In the same breath of vacuous editorializing we also see suggestions that 'payback' for past political and economic crimes by the Republican beast is somehow to be set aside by a glorious return to bipartisanship. Even Republican pundits have the audacity to suggest this, after years of obstructionism and thievery.
What might be a proper form of justice, now, is for the Republicans to be cast into oblivion, pursued by criminal investigation upon criminal investigation until they run out of money, time, and places to hide (such as right-wing think tanks, corporate boardrooms, and academia).
The coming meltdown is, by far, not conclusive (though it will be televised). If the Republicans are tossed, the usual moneyed interests will simply scurry back underground, switch parties (as they do with alacrity when the writing is on the wall), and re-launch the assault on what is after all the goal of Capitalism and its potent, viral version as hegemony -- human subjectivity (freedom) itself. The poisonous atmosphere currently engulfing the American Republic only proves the point that beneath all the ugly machinations of Mammon -- wars, occupations, environmental destruction, economic exploitation, vicious Social-Darwinist struggles -- the one true thing that would save 'us' is Truth (the scarcest and most precious commodity not quite 'on the planet'). Truth, as such, is not simply given; it is excavated, and it requires, as Kant proved, the highest formal laws of our rational being. These laws dovetail with morality, but not some cheap gerrymandered morality aimed at securing one’s 'base'. For all the talk of ethics in politics (including the ludicrous ethics committees in Congress), the one true form of justice left open for us is to apply in the most exquisite and rigorous manner the Moral Imperative to do what is required by our personal and collective inherent morality, even when it is not in our own 'personal' best interest to do so. Such a law currently requires that the Republicans lose, and that they not be given a free pass into exile. They should be prosecuted under the law (if the law has any meaning whatsoever, and even if it is in our personal best interest to fawn 'bipartisan').
In fact, it is in the interest of the nearly extinct American Republic (an abstraction, for sure, anyway) that we go against all proprietary interests, and, in so doing, 'we' at the same time sidestep the machine that might lecture us to let bygones be bygones -- given that it is in the machine's best interest that we do so. GK (10/22/06)
Washington (Reuters) - “Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald appears to be laying the groundwork for indictments this week over the outing of a covert CIA operative [Plamegate], including possible charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, lawyers and other sources involved in the case said on Sunday.” (Sunday, October 23, 2005) - Watch this site, Patrick J. Fitzgerald (Office of Special Counsel) / For further manifestations of The End, cliquez ici ...
New study puts civilian deaths in Iraq at 100,000 - "An estimated 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq as a direct or indirect consequence of last year's US-led invasion, according to a new study by a research team at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore." Taipei Times - New York Times News Service, Paris (10/30/04) / Iraq Body Count ...
June 26, 2004 - While stranded in Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport recently, for six hours, en route from Prague to New York, I spent an hour or two smoking and talking with a sad-eyed gentleman from Sarajevo. He was interested in what passes in the USA (what Jacques-Alain Miller has called the “United Symptoms of America”) for political culture, a culture primarily distinguished by collective amnesia. His main concern (and he was traveling to Washington) was how Bosnia could be forgotten so easily, and quickly, and why the US could move willy-nilly, assisting or ignoring the production of one wasteland after another, caring little for the wretched places that have passed out of view of its panoptic eye (the one on the dollar), while focusing on the latest to appear in the fun-house mirror of its imperial gaze.
His stories of the broken and misbegotten state of things in Bosnia were telling. He wondered aloud how an economy, not to mention a government, mired in the worst state of corruption imaginable -- that is, an economy run by criminals and a government riddled with war criminals (all watched over by the UN and NATO) -- could yet pass under the radar of international caritas. I wanted to tell him that cowboy (and crony) capitalism is the always-acceptable stalking horse for liberal democracy, but instead I just forfeited to him some general terms, including “cowboy capitalism” and the all-purpose locution “Human Rights is an abstraction” (which he duly jotted down on a scrap of paper).
If we can detect now, just off-stage (off-camera), a world-wide dismay (and a hoped for world-wide reprieve) of post-modern nihilism, in all of its decrepit forms, it may be quite simply because we have arrived at the point of ultimate crisis, a point more or less summarized by the deepening miasma in Iraq. George W. Bush (perhaps the first post-modern president, though that dishonor could also be applied to Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton) and his reign of idiocy has served the unintentional purpose of focusing the attention on a possible Way Out. This possible Way Out is prefigured in innumerable cultural instances, not unrelated, not the least of which is the turn under way in cultural studies; the putative ‘death of theory’ and a return to philosophy. This turn, in turn, is a dramatic and telling move (underway here and there) away from the worst ravages of the post-modern and nihilistic ‘thing’, generally subsumed (and poorly assimilated) under the rubric ‘post-structuralism’, toward something else altogether. As we pass from an era of post-modern thugs (Noriega, Milosevic, Karadzic and Hussein for sure, but also Bush-Cheney, Blair, Putin and Sharon), we see ahead a glimmer of the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. So much for “compassionate conservatism”, Robin Cook’s “enlightened foreign policy” (although he did quit) and various third ways, middle ways and/or half ways.
It is this something else that is extraordinarily compelling, insofar as it signals that the post-modern wasteland we all have the miserable privilege of inhabiting might yet be re-colonized by universal and humanitarian (let’s say, egalitarian) precepts. Such things (concepts), while formerly deployed as abstractions (and conveniently maintained as abstractions) are now, arguably, in the process of being made radically contingent in various types of cultural expression and, yes, rebellion. The foremost, from my very biased perspective, is the forward-leaning phenomenological turn underway in philosophy and aesthetics. While Slavoj Zizek and Alain Badiou further the cause of certain neo-Marxist strains of thought (and both have appropriated the so-called ‘theological turn’ in contemporary phenomenology, “theology without God”, to extract and re-deploy such abstract and universal precepts), we also are privileged to witness the arrival stateside of the magisterial works of Jean-Luc Marion (professor of philosophy and aesthetics at the Sorbonne, heir to Ricoeur, Lévinas and Derrida). Marion’s writings marvelously foreshadow what waits in the wings -- that is to say, the call of that sublime something else I dare say everyone not in love with or in bed with post-modern nihilism awaits. It is this something else, however, that is the ultimate enemy of what now passes for business as usual, neo-liberalism (global capitalism). For this reason, generally, whenever it begins to appear, in systems of political ontology or the arts, it is promptly shut down and/or co-opted. Needless to say, neo-conservative hypocrisy is the prime example of being in bed with post-modern nihilism, while neo-liberal double talk is its doppelganger. Rightly, therefore, has it been said that the mouthpieces of late-modern media are not so much the spokespersons for neo-liberalism as they are neo-liberalism writ large. The grossly indeterminate rhetoric of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Armitage et alia merely proves the former point, while the interpretive gloss (whitewash) generally thrown over events by the Op-Ed pages of such mainstream newspapers as The New York Times (despite Krugman’s insistent “howl”), The Washington Post (despite Cohen’s clever inconsistency) and The Los Angeles Times (despite Günter Grass' extraordinary "The US Betrays Its Core Values", 04/07/03), more or less proves the latter.* The US-mandated, empty-headed and toothless posturing at the UN is, no doubt, a product of the self-same contagion. Anyway, as I told the sad-eyed gentleman from Sarajevo, it is actually a better idea to read The Wall Street Journal since, therein, you at least do not have to wade through and interpret the double-talk of the abovementioned neo-liberal broadsheets.Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11 comes, then, at exactly the right moment (thank you, Lions Gate), as does the media blitz promoting a film that the Bushites would dearly love to find a way to discredit. Despite its marketing as “documentary”, Moore’s film is quite simply the specular work of cinema mirroring the hoped for End of Nihilism, a landscape of nothingness that stretches (alas) as far as the blind eye cannot see. This end is hopefully the beginning of something long overdue. Is it possible that we are witnessing the re-emergence of a counterculture which might truly counter the mayhem we see perpetrated around the globe in the name of ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’ and ‘neo-liberalism’ (Capitalism Triumphant)?
Given the perennially conservative state of the American public, the Kerry juggernaut (now mopping up millions of dollars left and center) makes sense. So too does the new, earnestly smiling version of Kerry recently unpacked by Ted Koppel despite or because, as Gore Vidal is reported to have said, the dour Kerry looks like Lincoln (after he was shot). Optimism sells!, we were reminded throughout the course of the popular media’s mawkish, distorted and mind-numbingly endless coverage of Reagan’s funeral (a bizarre and sick post-modern remake of Kennedy’s funeral). Yet the Kerry machinery (the Democratic Leadership Council), the same that destroyed Howard Dean, may give pause to anyone interested in truly undoing what has been wrought these past several decades, since Clinton too was a product of this loathsome apparatus. As Chomsky and others have pointed out, voting for Kerry is more or less required in any state not considered safely democratic. Although many of us opposed to another Bush term are, by default, card-carrying members of the Anti-Republican Party, a party that is (by the way) by no means synonymous with the Democratic Party, it is only in states that are safely democratic that it is sensible to register what always needs to be registered, the so-called ‘protest vote’ (in this year’s contest most likely a vote for Nader). Al Gore’s recent fiery appearance at Georgetown University, lambasting Bush’s lies in no uncertain terms, clearly shows that the writing is on the wall. Listen, then, for more Republican complaints about ad hominem attacks. It is now perhaps safe to say what you really think, more or less on the record, since the country has had about all it can take of the post-modern triumvirate, Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, currently steering the ship of state into the abyss. Notwithstanding the macabre outer circles of this political cabal (for example, the grim and spectral triple-headed monster known as Ridge-Mueller-Ashcroft), Time Itself seems to be crying out loud for an end to the bleak prospects of a sinister (and cynical) Empire of Broken Signs masquerading as a Republic. There is more than a whiff of sulfur, here, especially when it comes to the triple-headed monster denoted above, a beast that last stalked American soil during the McCarthy-era witch hunt.Yet as Bush bed down late this past week in his sumptuous suite at Dromoland Castle in County Clare, Ireland, dropping by the US-EU summit en route to the NATO summit in Istanbul, Turkey, flitting from photo op to photo op, we were reminded (after the fact), as if by the peculiar image itself, and if there is any justice left in the world, that it is also bedtime for Bush-Cheney. The sell-by date for their psychotic, ‘bi-polar’ vision of the world has come. As a symptom of times hopefully past (passing), this vision (a vast, unrelenting nightmare) must be, finally, both discredited and replaced with something else altogether. One can already hear a very different tune, if one listens carefully, drifting in and out of range, at first a mere tease, not unlike the one that haunted Swann in Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. A musical phrase linked, after all, to appropriate Slavoj Zizek’s allusive locution, to "The State of Emergency Called Love". The alternative (too horrific to envision) is war without end.
GK (06/26/04) 10/24/05 - It took awhile longer than it should have, but, as The End of the Bush-Cheney cabal approaches, signs abound that the otherwise feckless press now wishes to pile on, none more so than the beseiged and agrieved The New York Times, vis-à-vis but of course its own role in Plamegate ... Meanwhile, Maureen Dowd scored a direct hit on the whole sordid journalistic mess with Woman of Mass Destruction (The New York Times, 10/22/05) while Slavoj Zizek exploded the plague of fantasies buried deep within the ugly contours of the Republican 'mindset' by way of Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans in The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape (In These Times, 10/20/05) ... Thus small glimmers of Truth seem dazzling against the spectral nothingness of the Present Moment ...POSTSCR(Y)PTS
Despite the outcome of the 2004 election (and the slim margin by which Bush-Cheney II 'won' ... irregularities notwithstanding), the analysis above and below stands ... Bush-Cheney II (hopefully) represents the last hurrah for Neanderthal Republicanism ...
Crimes of WarFor a slightly different take on all of this (plus), see "Sublime Scare Tactics", The Old Town Review (October 2004)
“You can move up a little closer / I will throw a blanket over / We can weigh all the tears in one hand / Against the laughter in the other / We could be hanging around here for centuries / Trying to make sense of this, my dear / While the planets try to get organised / Way above the stratosphere / But they keep bringing out the dead, now / It’s easy if we just walk away / They keep bringing out the dead, now / It’s been a long, long day” Nick Cave, “Messiah Ward”, Abattoir Blues (Mute Song Ltd., 2004)
“The aide said that guys like me (i.e., reporters and commentators) were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality […] We’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’” Mark Danner, “The Secret Way to War”, The New York Review of Books (June 9, 2005), p. 73 (pp. 70-74), regarding the “secret Downing Street memo” (July 23, 2002), which came to light in early May 2005 (just before the British elections), and a conversation with a “senior advisor” to Bush-Cheney - “Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.” Joseph Goebbels, in ibid., pp. 73-74
For those still unconvinced that the Bush-Cheney regime is, indeed, proto-fascist, please consider the fact that their base is largely: 1/ White/Rich; 2/ Stupid/Rich (Michael Moore’s point); and/or 3/ White/Christian. The fundamentalist bent of the latter, White/Christian, is also Bush’s prime reason for periodically swerving to the far right, as far as domestic and cultural policies are concerned. It is Karl Rove who monitors the numbers in this regard, steering Bush toward different parts of his base as need be. These structural aspects of his so-called ‘following’ add up to an implicit proto-fascist agenda. While not obviously racist, they are crypto-racist (and, therefore, crypto-fascist). The weakest and, therefore, most malleable/unreliable portion of this base is, in fact, the White/Rich, or those who will bail when a new Great White Hope appears on the political horizon, Kerry?, or when the damage wrought by tilting toward the latter two aspects (Stupid/Rich and White/Christian) is too great to bear (such as bankrupting the Treasury). Bush has notoriously courted Wall Street since coming into office, whereas his first campaign was effectively conducted without directly milking the East Coast plutocracy. The Bush-Cheney environmental, economic and social agenda, while aimed broadly at its base, is also aimed straight at the dark heart of the Market, the movers and shakers in financial services and corporate boardrooms (and bedrooms). Nominally Republican, this highly-lucrative sector, currently being spoon-fed (catered) by Bush-Cheney Inc., also includes a layer of neo-conservative and neo-liberal democrats. Some members of this demographic within a demographic cross party lines when it is in their own best interest; that is, when doing so will enhance their personal fortune and/or assuage their vaguely liberal conscience. If such democrats will sometimes vote Republican (e.g., Reagan), whereas republicans will rarely vote Democrat, it is, in fact, these ‘soft’ aspects of the neo-democratic demographic that could actually make a significant difference in the forthcoming election. One has to wonder, then, if the decision to hold the Republican National Convention in New York was not actually a calculation by Karl Rove to appease that neo-democratic demographic, notwithstanding the obvious attempt to seize Ground Zero, once again, in the name of political opportunism, and throw Gov. George Pataki a bone.
PLAMEGATE (10/24/05) - "Psssst ... Joe Wilson is right. They are fascists, and this is what fascists do. They make people afraid. They turn a populace against an outsider while at the same time denying that populace information or even hope of a peaceful resolution. They mobilize for attack through intimidation and scare-tactics. Ask Herman Goering, who explained during the Nuremburg trials, 'Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.'" William Rivers Pitt, The Bunker Mentality (TruthOut) Empire Notes (Rahul Mahajan) / Bush Death Mask (Arts Journal)For more on the current cultural shift underway ‘here’ and ‘there’, see Looking Awry 2004 (Soma, 06/25/04) ... / For a critique of the impact of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, see Moore's Law (The Economist, 07/01/04) / For a dissection of the political merits of Fahrenheit 9/11, and its failure to tackle the broader implications of American Empire, see Robert Jensen's Stupid White Movie (CounterPunch, 07/05/04) / The critique from the Left of Moore's film hinges upon its misrepresentations, its blindspots, and its perceived 'white, liberal agenda'. Ostensibly a critique of America after 9/11, the film fails to connect the dots of the larger political-cultural picture; that is, American imperial hegemony, something that transcends the Bush administration and something that will not go away short of a radical restructuring of capitalism itself. / Oddly, the critique on the Left resembles the critique Right-of-Center insofar as it seizes on the same inconsistencies and distortions within the film. On the other hand, The Village Voice (left-of-nowhere?) filed an auto-da-fé for certain members of the so-called ‘liberal’ media, including ABC (Disney) and NBC (GE), taking special aim at the loathed Christopher Hitchens and his ugly anti-Moore diatribe in the electronic pages of Slate (MSNBC). While noting the unearthly silence, for the most part, from right-wing media outlets including Fox (Murdoch/News Corp) as well as what it terms (strangely) the ‘left-leaning’ CNN (Viacom), The Voice speculates in print that the latter are merely hedging their bets in the forthcoming election cycle, waiting to see which way the wind is blowing (and in which direction, left or right, heads might roll). / "But how to account for Fox's relatively merciful coverage (or the exceedingly odd editorial in Monday's New York Post defending Moore from the Federal Election Commission's attempt to muzzle his ads)? Here's my explanation: Rupert Murdoch is covering his ass in case John Kerry wins. For that matter, his news machine doesn't have to prove itself to the Bushies -- and besides, an attack from Fox would have easily been dismissed as partisan. Better to let NBC and ABC lend the imprimatur of their ‘objectivity.’ I'm not saying these networks acted in cahoots; they merely expressed their interests." Richard Goldstein, Mauling Michael Moore (The Village Voice, 06/29/04)
FAX ATTACK - FAX THE SO-CALLED PRESIDENT @ (01) 202.456.2461
Noted in Passing (Summer 2004) - "Bush Camp Studies Ways to Suspend Elections" / "Kerry Camp Studies Ways to Contest Close Election" / Possible-Impossible Headlines (Autumn 2004 / Winter 2005) - "Stinging Rebuke: Voters Swarm to the Polls, Sending Bush-Cheney Packing", "Congressional Intelligence Review Proves Politically-Timed Terror Threats All-But Manufactured by Mueller-Ashcroft-Ridge", "US Sings a New Tune: Foreign Policy Reviews to Introduce Sweeping Changes", "US Withdraws from, Abrogates World Trade Organization Treaties: Frees Third World Population from Multi-National Corporate Usury", "All Bush-Era Tax Breaks, Corporate and Otherwise, Repealed: Congress Abdicates in Face of Public Outcry on Staggering National Debt", "Nader Appointed Attorney General in Kerry-Edwards Administration", "Nader Indicts Former AG Ashcroft for Abuse of Constitution: Ashcroft Pleads the Fifth", "President Kerry Suspends All Aid to Israel Pending Demolition of West Bank ‘Security’ Barrier", "Military Bulldozers Used to Raze Palestinian Homes Pulled from West Bank to Demolish 'The Wall'"
OUTTAKES (PASSIM)
"So here we are, the people of the world, confronted with an Empire armed with a mandate from heaven (and, as added insurance, the most formidable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in history). Here we are, confronted with an Empire that has conferred upon itself the right to go to war at will, and the right to deliver people from corrupting ideologies, from religious fundamentalists, dictators, sexism, and poverty by the age-old, tried-and-tested practice of extermination. Empire is on the move, and Democracy is its sly new war cry. Democracy, home-delivered to your doorstep by daisy cutters. Death is a small price for people to pay for the privilege of sampling this new product: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (bring to a boil, add oil, then bomb)." --Arundhati Roy, Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free) (Z Magazine), first presented in New York City at Riverside Church (05/13/03) / Regarding "The Pamphleteers, 2001-2004" (Vidal, Chomsky, Mailer, Roy), cliquez ici ...
Zizek / Badiou - Slavoj Zizek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real (The Symptom 2, 2002) / "Welcome to the Desert of the Real [currently out of print] is the text from which Slavoj Zizek read from on November 14, 2001 in his lecture, 'Passions of the Real: Violence In The XXth Century' at Jack Tilton Gallery in NYC." (The Wooster Press) / See also, Alain Badiou's "Highly Speculative Reasoning on the
Concept of Democracy", in The Symptom 2 (as above) ...Alain Gresh - There is Another, Better World (Le Monde Diplomatique, 05/13/98)
Human Rights Watch - The Road to Abu Ghraib (06/04/04) ...
"George Bush, Anti-Christ", Erodiade (08/08/07) ...
Aragon ...
