Where does our guilt comes from? Žižek’s argument from the art of ridiculous sublime can gives us a hint on the cause: “The Nazi executioner acting as a cold bureaucrat, indifferent to the plight of his victims, was not unlike the subject who can maintain a tired indifference towards the comedy he is watching, while the TV set, through its soundtrack, performs the laughter for him, on his behalf.” What I mean about the crimes without stains is precisely this: the subject who can maintain a tired indifference towards the comedy he is watching, while the TV set, through its soundtrack, performs the laughter for him, on his behalf, is not unlike the Nazi executioner acting as a cold bureaucrat, indifferent to the plight of his victims. And so we are, indifferent to the plight of the victims, of ourselves. Executioner and victims at the same time, looking for punishment and relief.
Why does this reversal do not work? We must posit Auschwitz as the peak of human monstrosity. Mustn't we? Pragmatically, is it impossible to go without that warning, the warning of the Nazi who sleep inside society, and to which Europe is again dangerously approaching. Nevertheless, from a theoretical point of view, or rather something from my guts tells me that, I cannot but to see that the world as it is today is even more monstrous than the Nazi Germany. I recall here Bolaño’s Rat Police, when the killer ask the cop, “Do you think that stopping me you will stop the crimes? I am sick, I know. You can kill me. But who will cure your boss? Who will cure you, Pepe? I know perfectly where our people is heading.” We are all sick and you know it.
I know it very well, but nevertheless...
“We sooner or later end up with the blank screen of the suicide.” I think this is the best image to illustrate Bartleby’s final suicide. What does his suicide mean? The only ethical act possible for us, sitting in front of the TV, enjoying our beer, in one of the small and perfect towns of Europe, is, as the Musselmann in the concentration camp, reveal against the Nazis and then kill ourselves. The difference, of course, is that the distance between we and the Nazis is inexistent. Capitalism is nothing more than what we do, what we think, how we act, and what we believe. It is certainly full of metaphysical subtleties but as any process in the order of being is nothing more than a given configuration of the world. In the Nazi Germany there were the ones who should deal with copses like in a factory. Others should make movies and music for the Reich. The most should simply keep on living as if nothing was going on. Nowadays, our job in the factory of corpses consists in enjoy life and the coke we drink, attempting to make the violent appear natural. Enlighten ourselves, find meaning in everyday little things: the sunset, a dinner with friends, a ride in my bike. In the meantime, the corpses rotten next to the walls we build to keep our first world countries safe. There is nothing wrong with it, we hear someone saying, it is human activity, and we agree. We are happy children without the burden of truth that deconstruction took away. Nobody can blame us because there is no right or wrong. One must try to have a happy life and that is more than enough to keep you busy. The next movie, the next cell phone, the next car. A family, maybe children or a dog. Fight a bit for immigrant’s rights, be tolerant. Vote for the Right, run a marathon, build a wooden house in the forest. So nothing really ever changes.
Parra says it quite clearly: “Curar una enfermedad es un crimen, lo que hay que hacer es pegarse un tiro o algo x el estilo.”
This is the ethical parallax.
Photo by Aarakke
P.S.: The poem of parra can be loosely translated as "to cure an illness is a crime, what one must do it to shoot oneself or something like that."
1 comment:
Yes, I like this idea of Zizek 'canned laughter' - i.e. when you watch some stupid sitcom and there is fake laughter pumped into the television set. Zizek says the television is actually laughing for you and you have been totally removed from the reality of your own laughter. You no longer have to laugh because it is being done for you, but you still reap the benefits of that laughter and you feel a sense of relief.
This fake laughter is a type of ideology. We do not need to participate in the actual laughter in order to feel as though we really did laugh. We did not particpate but we feel as if we did. 'We did not know it, but we did it' and this is a take on the classic phrase of Marx's basic definition of ideology: 'they do not know it but they are doing it'. Marx identifies the very essence of ideology with this simple statement.
We are guilty in so many ways.
Most workers of the world are harmed by capital but still they must get that wage in order to live. The tragedy is that most global wage-workers have forgotten that they are being exploited during their work-day; because they are not working for themselves rather they are valorizing some other entitiy that they have no stake in. We are making our own 'music' and reinforcing the ideas that support capital, and it has to come to a crux point someday.
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