“in the classical – legal – conception of sovereignty, the
monarch isn't just considered superior (“sovereign”) to his miserable subjects
in relative terms. Ruling by divine right, his superiority is absolute and
transcends vulgar human existence. Taking life or letting live
are the sovereign's fundamental attributes. But only when he actually kills –
even tyranically, unjustly – does the sovereign fully exert his symbolic rights
over life. Foucault suggested that the punishment was all the more ruthless in
that it was meant to offset the discontinuous hold of power over society. 'the
meshes of the net were too big,' and eluded his grasp. This strategic
vision of domination went a long way in accounting for the technological
mutation of power in the west at the dawn of the industrial revolution. While
outwardly maintaining the image of sovereignty, a new type of disciplinary
control sank deeper into the social body, down to its most tenuous elements.
What disappeared in the process was symbolic exchange. Foucault's inversion of
the system of power from the top down, from the sovereignty of death to the
discipline of life, follows the same logic. The new system of power which
replaced the old in the nineteenth century had its own claims: the right to take
life and let die. Life replaced death as a means of controlling society
at large.
Hegel's master/slave dialectics was based on the slave's fear
of death. Giving it a perverse twist, bataille hypothesized that there was not
just one, but two separate forms of mastery. The first, relying on classical
'domination,' is geared to produce obedient subjects. The master rules because
the slave is afraid of death, and he is not. But were the master to actually
die, bataille objected, he would lose his mastery. The master was no different
from the slave, and dialectics was a con-game. Both were ruled by the fear.
Bataille went on to hypothesize another form of sovereignty that would be divorced
from domination. The real sovereign is noble, in the nietzschean
sense. He doesn't derive his power from his subjects, but from his own death.
He only waits it to come, immune from any danger save the one who will murder
him. It was in that way that bataille managed to reestablish a symbolic
exchange where there was none.” - sylvere lotringer
“bataille looked upon capital as enslaving workers as being the
same thing as the sovereign imposing obedience on his subjects. Just because
the sovereign chose to let his subjects live didn't mean he let them
free. They remained subjected to him in whatever function they carried out.
Whether a prisoner of war, whose life was spared; a slave serving in sumptuary
domesticity; an emancipated slave; or a serf in the fields, none of their lives
were their own. They didn't have to die in order to be dead; their death was differed,
kept in suspension, until the sovereign decided otherwise.
And the same holds true for the factory worker. Labor,
bataille maintained, was a unilateral gift of capital to the workers and was meant
'to condemn them to a hideous degradation.' contrary to what marx believed,
the process of production wasn't set up to extract from them a surplus-value,
its real purpose was to subject them to a sacrifice. And bataille dismissed the
american 'subterfuge' of compensating workers for the debasement that had been
imposed on them. Nothing could modify the fundamental division between noble
and ignoble men. 'the cruel game of social life does not vary among the
different civilized countries, where the insulting splendor of the rich loses
and degrades the human nature of the lower class.'
and 'the scenario has never changed,' baudrillard concurred,
since labor power has been instituted on death. Having converted his death into
a wage, the worker could only free himself by putting his own death on the
line.” -lotringer
“unlike artaud and bataille, his older contemporaries,
baudrillard never yearned for an inner experience of death reached through
anguish, terror, or eroticism, yet he remained convinced that death as a
form internal to the system was the only way left to offset it. As labor
was slow death, only an instant and violent challenge could possibly free one
from it. Against every 'revolutionary' view, he insisted, 'we must maintain
that the only alternative to labor is not free time, or non-labor, it is
sacrifice.'[39]” -lotringer
“premeditation of death is premeditation of freedom. . .
acknowledging death frees us from every subjection and constraint” - montaigne
“power itself must be abolished – and not solely because of a
refusal to be dominated, which is at the heart of all traditional struggles –
but also, just as violently, in the refusal to dominate.” -baudrillard
“hegemony works through general masquerade, it relies on the
excessive use of every sign and obscenity, the way it mocks its own values, and
challenges the rest of the world by its cynicism (“carnivalization”).
Classical, historical domination imposed a system of positive values,
displaying as well as defending these values. Contemporary hegemony, on the
other hand, relies on a symbolic liquidation of every possible value. The terms
'simulacrum,' 'simulation' and 'virtual' summarize this liquidation, in which
every signification is eliminated in its own sign, and the profusion of signs
parodies a by now unobtainable reality. This is the total masquerade in which
domination itself is engulfed. Power is only the parody of the signs of power –
just as war is only the parody of signs of war, including technology.
Masquerade of war, masquerade of power. We can therefore speak of the hegemony
of masquerade, and the masquerade of hegemony. All meaning is abolished in its
own sign and the profusion of signs parodies a now undiscoverable reality.” -baudrillard
“power itself must be abolished – and not solely in the
refusal to be dominated, which is at the heart of all traditional struggles – but
also, just as violently, in the refusal to dominate (if the refusal to dominate
had the same violence and the same energy as the refusal to be dominated, the
dream of revolution would have disappeared long ago). Intelligence cannot, can
never be in power because intelligence consists of this double refusal.” -baudrillard
“what is at stake in global confrontation is this provocation
to generalized exchange, the unbridles exchange of all differences, the
challenge for other cultures to equal us in deculturation, the debasement of
values, the adhesion to the most disenchanted models. This confrontation is not
quite a 'clash of civilizations,' but it is not economic or political either,
and today it only concerns the west and islam in appearance. Fundamentally, it
is a duel, and its stakes are symbolic: physical and mental liquidation, a
universal carnivalization imposed by the west at the cost of its own
humiliation, its symbolic expropriation – against all of the singularities that
resist it. Challenge versus challenge? Potlatch versus potlatch? Does the
slow-death strategy or systematic mortification equal the stakes of a
sacrificial death? Can this confrontation come to an end and what could be the
consequences if one or the other wins?” -baudrillard
“security is the best medium for terror.” -baudrillard
“in the past, totalitarian powers were the ones who enclosed
themselves behind walls (the best historical example being the berlin wall) to
escape the wave of 'democracy'. Now these 'democracies' are building protective
walls to preserve the correct use of freedom from the hordes of immigrants or
fanatics. If oppression was only possible behind the soviet iron wall, today,
freedom is only possible behind the iron wall of democracy. . . we must
therefore recognize that the west has become a totalitarian space – the space
of a self-defensive hegemony defending itself against its own weakness.” -baudrillard
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