Thursday, January 11, 2007
(1:10 PM) | Anonymous:
The Nihilistic Ground of Contemporary Politics
There is a remarkable and little noticed phenomenon in contemporary American politics, and that is that despite the fact that the Iraq war dominates our political consciousness there is virtually no discussion of the causes of the war by our politicians and journalists, consequently there is no serious public controversy about the war, or none which could have any real effect upon the war itself, and if only at this point there is a gulf between the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq. This reminds one of the most catastrophic war in history, the First World War, which had no open causes at all which were not peripheral; and if its real cause was a clash between Western imperialisms, these imperialisms ultimately perished as a consequence of this war, and with them perished or were ultimately transformed the deepest grounds of Western civilization. It was the First World War that released nihilism into the very center of our history and consciousness, a nihilism that previously had been confined to a small minority, but which now becomes comprehensive throughout consciousness and society, as the world is turned upside down.Now it is true that there is little genuine awareness of nihilism until the late twentieth century, and no agreement as to what nihilism is; nonetheless nihilism is a subject of pervasive concern, although this has yet to decisively enter our political arena. We are, however, aware of the nihilistic ground of a uniquely modern totalitarianism, one only possible as a consequence of the world having been turned upside down. And if Fascism and Stalinism are openly nihilistic, and clearly had overwhelmingly nihilistic consequences, here a political nihilism is all too clear. Can such a totalitarianism never return, are we now truly immune to a fully political nihilism, and how could this be if our world is in continuity with the world of a century ago, or is such continuity simply impossible? Despite the extravagant claims of spokesmen for postmodernity, there is clearly a full continuity in late modernity in the economic and scientific realms, and this is true in art and religion as well, even if real breaks or transformations have occurred socially and politically. Now just as a profoundly nihilistic politics once ravaged our world, can we imagine that this had no ultimate effect us, and certainly not upon our political life and institutions? Totalitarianism created a truly if not absolutely new political rhetoric, one divorced from all actuality, as fantasy for the first time becomes truly pathological, and an individuality that had been so powerful in Western history is not simply ended but reversed.
Hence totalitarianism created a truly new anonymity, and not simply a namelessness but a reversal of every naming that had previously occurred, thereby a truly new humanity is at hand, but has this humanity now wholly disappeared? Perhaps this is the point at which there is the clearest continuity between totalitarianism and our world, for ours is a genuinely anonymous world, as is perhaps most manifest in that wholly new electronic world which we have created; but so, too, a new anonymity dominates our political world, as for the first time American politics is truly anonymous, and is so in its rhetoric, its politicians, and its commentators, as everything that we once knew as political life has seemingly vanished. Who could imagine a genuine political controversy occurring in our world, or a truly political transformation, or has this indeed occurred, but only invisibly and inaudibly, and one leaving in its wake an ultimate political vacuum or void? Is this void not manifest in contemporary political language, and not only in the language of our political actors and commentators, but in every attempt that we now make to speak politically, including even our most guarded and private ones? If so, this would be a truly new impotence, and one historically unique, for now both the master and the slave can only act or speak anonymously, and now for the first time political power itself is ultimately anonymous, thereby ushering in the dissolution of all political responsibility.
It is fascinating that so little attention is given to responsibility in our world, it is as though responsibility has simply vanished, as is most clear in our political world where not only is no one responsible for anything, but the very question of responsibility is not even raised. Now seemingly the present administration is responsible for the war in Iraq, and this has aroused the fury of a great many, but this is an idle or inconsequential fury if it is free of all awareness of what actually initiated the war, or what its real grounds or motives were, and these perhaps will never become manifest, and surely not if responsible political action has ended. There is a genuine analogy here between the war in Iraq and the First World War, and even if we didn’t simply stumble into the war in Iraq, that did not occur in the First World War either, there were clear and comprehensive preparations for both wars, and this very momentum might well have made war inevitable, but an inevitability independent of all actual decision. If only at this point the Second World War is wholly different from both the First World War and the war in Iraq, but thereby we can see a chasm between our world and the world of the Second World War, but not a chasm between our world and the world of the First World War. Inevitably we associate the First World War with the advent of a fully or actually historical nihilism, will we come to associate the war in Iraq with the advent of an awakening to a genuinely American nihilism, an awakening of the world itself to a nihilistic America, but more deeply an awakening of America itself to its own nihilism?
The question of the meaning and identity of nihilism now becomes overwhelming, and all too few guides are at hand, for just as there is no common meaning of nihilism, there is no critical meaning either, nor even critical investigations which share a common ground. Yet decisive openings to the resolution of this question are certainly present in our imaginative worlds, and it is all too significant that our great American epic is Moby Dick, and while the White Whale that is here enacted is far more than a figura of America, Moby Dick is perhaps our purest vision of the Nothing, and of that Nothing which is an ultimate ground of American destiny. Dramatic enactments of this destiny occur most clearly in the major plays of Eugene O’Neill, who is not only our greatest but our most American playwright, one can perhaps discover our contemporary destiny being enacted here, and enacted as a genuine tragedy. Yet even as we enact this tragedy, we are politically closed to it, a closure marvelously enacted in the dramaturgy of O’Neill -- an O’Neill who gave us not only a uniquely American tragedy, but an anonymous one as well. Both Melville and O’Neill have given us profound enactments of an anonymous America, but apparently no one is at hand who can mediate these enactments to our contemporary political world, and it is possible that politics is no longer open to a genuinely critical investigation, or to any kind of imaginative unveiling.
If America is now the most powerful nation in the world, and perhaps the most powerful nation in history, it is not only open to demonic power, but perhaps must inevitably enact demonic power, one again and again enacted in the American imagination, and this not only in spite of an established image of American innocence, but perhaps even by way of that innocence. This appears to be true in both the Vietnam and the Iraq wars, as here a kind of tragic innocence is enacted, certainly a destructive innocence, and a truly self-destructive innocence, as America becomes the very opposite of its self-proclaimed identity, which may well be a uniquely American destiny. Yet the war in Iraq and the war in Vietnam are very different wars, the Vietnam war evoked truly critical political controversy, one absent in the Iraq war, and absent because our politics has deeply changed during this brief period. Not only are we far less open to political responsibility, but our sense of evil, and of good and evil, has truly diminished. It is remarkable that even in this war an American president and an American administration can wear the mask of innocence, and one not even challenged by what presents itself as an opposition party, one could not even imagine this as occurring in another country, nor could one imagine it as occurring in a previous America, and if only here we can know that American has undergone an ultimate, even if invisible, transformation.
It is difficult to believe that only a generation ago there were sophisticated political actors and thinkers in America, or if not sophisticated actors truly worldly actors, actors who could actually enact their own roles, and not appear as puppets or automatons. Yet that would appear to be necessary and essential to contemporary politics, or to “postmodern” politics, a politics truly different from its predecessors, and perhaps most different in the universality of its masks, leading one to suspect that it will never be possible to write a genuine history of postmodern politics. How difficult it is to believe that only two generations ago there was a genuine concern for justice in America, and no matter how warped or distorted it may have been it actually was a political force, a force that would be inconceivable today, and yet our world is not even aware that this force has vanished. It is as though such a force is now unimaginable. So, too, our political categories have seemingly collapsed -- does either ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ now mean what it once did? And this is not simply the product of an inevitable historical transformation, but rather a collapse of these categories themselves. Perhaps ‘radical’ does retain a previous meaning, but are there any radicals in politics today, and does radical any longer have a genuine political meaning, or a genuine political meaning in America? Our greatest modern prophet, William Blake, could hail America as the most revolutionary power in the world, and in America could envision its revolution as realizing the death of Urizen or Satan, and thus as the inaugurator of apocalypse itself.
America may well be the most apocalyptic nation in the world today, and the only one whose political language embodies an apocalyptic rhetoric, one seemingly inescapable in our most popular political figures and movements, and inescapable in our foreign policy, too. No matter how impossible the war in Iraq becomes or the war in Vietnam became, we cannot dissociate our wars from apocalyptic conflicts. We should not imagine that “manifest destiny” is only true of nineteenth century America, it is far more powerful today, or more powerful in its impact upon the world as a whole, an impact even surpassing that of the Roman Empire. Manifest destiny is most opposed to any kind of tragic destiny, and despite its imaginative enactments America is seemingly more closed to tragedy than any other people, a closure fully manifest in its foreign policy, and never more so than today. Who can forget that our one modern innocent president, Jimmy Carter, was decisively defeated when he publicly and forcefully evoked the possibility of a dark future for America, a darkness now more fully embodied than he could have foreseen, or that any of our American prophets or thinkers have foreseen. But are we now living in a world which is beyond light and darkness, and beyond good and evil as well, so inevitably these have disappeared from our political language and consciousness, as American truly has inaugurated a brave new world.
But is it a truly new world? Or is it a truly old world which is disguised with the mirage of the new, a truly old imperialism veiled with the illusory garments of the new, an absolutely illusory newness embodied in the very advent of America? Has there ever been another people who so imagined themselves as the absolutely new, another people who enacted a comparable destiny, or another people who have been so radically an apocalyptic people? Now an apocalyptic politics is not new, it is forcefully embodied in the Nazis, the Stalinists, and the Maoists, all of whom attempted and in large measure realized absolute transformations of the world, transformations which have certainly transformed world history, and transformed it in such a way as to terrify all others. Is the world now responding to America in a comparable way? Or is it responding to it as a new and equally benign British Empire? Or is America all too innocent and ultimately powerless? Never before has a great power so defeated itself as America has in its Vietnam and Iraq wars, and just as the American Civil War surpasses all other civil wars in its violence and destructiveness, is American imperialism the most self-defeating imperialism in history? And is American politics the most impotent of all great power politics, or is it a truly new politics which is destined to be the politics of the world as a whole?
