The Obscure Chant of Protest: Bagua and Democracy

The recent popular follow up to the massacre in the Peruvian Amazon in Bagua is exhibiting a startling parallel to the American resistance to the occupation of Iraq in its ideological contents. The following passage from Zizek’s “Resistance is Surrender” provides the key to the issue:

“The big demonstrations in London and Washington against the US attack on Iraq a few years ago offer an exemplary case of this strange symbiotic relationship between power and resistance. Their paradoxical outcome was that both sides were satisfied. The protesters saved their beautiful souls: they made it clear that they don’t agree with the government’s policy on Iraq. Those in power calmly accepted it, even profited from it: not only did the protests in no way prevent the already-made decision to attack Iraq; they also served to legitimize it. Thus George Bush’s reaction to mass demonstrations protesting his visit to London, in effect: ‘You see, this is what we are fighting for, so that what people are doing here – protesting against their government policy – will be possible also in Iraq!’” (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n22/zize01_.html)

What lessons if any can we draw from this strange complicity of resistance and submission to inform what is happening grosso modo as our resistance to the massacre in Bagua? The answer to this question can be suggested through another question: what if the exclusion from democratic liberties and the effective neglect of the political agency of the natives is but the obverse of their inscription as aborigine victims, the victims whose worldview must be safeguarded by the majority and whose liberties we must secure by our skepticism against the State's intervention? What if the form in which we protest the State in favor of the excluded rights of the victims in Bagua is effectively a stage, a fake protest, analogous to the populist trap which Zizek (2009) has recently imputed as the standard populist impase. Here we must look at the concrete contents of the popular reaction to Bagua, in which the general opinion contends the peaceful lives of the Aguarunean people peacefully protesting for a democratic solution was abruptly interrupted by the State's armed intervention which resulted in the explosion of violence and confirmed the State's negligent political agenda as having marginally left the Amazon out of the proper democratic dialog. It is in this general diagnosis that we can apply Zizek's formula for populism, in which the public uproar begins in conceiving the necessity for action as rooted in the disturbance of some preceding or projected balance:

"Populism is always sustained by some kind of frustrated despair, by a cry: 'I do not know what is going on, I just have enough of it, I cannot go on, it must stop', an impatient outburst, a refusal to patiently understand, the exasperation at the complexity, and the ensuing conviction that there must be someone responsible for all the mess, which is why an agent who is behind and explains it all is needed... Here what fetish gives body to is precisely my disavowal of knowledge, my refusal to fully assume what I know." ('Notes Towards a Definition of Communist Culture' Masterclass
Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, 18. June 2009; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9eFp2Hx_w4&feature=related)

And doesn't this formula describe precisely the discursive contours of the popular reaction in Bagua? The reactionary mass of appalled moralistic chants, from the congress to the streets, consisted in making the concrete legislation over the Amazonian territory and the rights of its people the simple failure of the State to achieve a proper democratic dialog, where even the Aguarunean blockage is reduced to having been the demonstration of their resentment to the lack of a proper democratic dialog for integrated policy. This way, the complexity of the Situation which links the difficult connection between the natives' right to entitlement to the land against the State prospect of industrialization becomes blurred into a simple excess of authoritarian violence: the killings in Bagua are nothing but the extension of the failed diplomacy of the State. At the core of the choice of protesting to the violation of democracy in favor of the natives’ urge for democratic dialog, protesters effectively choose in favor of ignorance by obscurely supplanting the ruse of authoritarian excess to our very impotence and unwillingness to think the exclusion of the natives as constitutive of the liberal market policy. So the first thing that surprised about Bagua is how in a first stage, when the State reported the murder of twenty policemen in the event of the riots, the masses were at large immobile, save for the obvious State homage to the heroic police for having put their lives at risk in the fulfillment of their duties. Only once the truth about an exceeding number of victims among the natives was reported did the masses congregate causing anarchic uproar.

Everyone found the route towards indignation once it had been known that State policemen opened fire against the natives; it didn't matter that the succesion of the events which initiated the shootings was unclear in every way possible. First, the obvious direct involvement of the Nationalists (rendered factually in their complicity with foreign powers in effecting insurgence at the preceding congress) did nothing but feed the antagonistic masses up to their ridiculous communal boycott at congress, singing conjointly the national anthem to be finally suspended from parliamentary action. This of course was immediately disgusting as a gesture, since those who were also the intellectual authors of producing the insurgence which resulted in the murders were not only assigned no responsibility for their deliberate political manipulation, but they hypocritically joined the band of humanitarian protestants against the vices of authoritarian violence perpetrated by the State.

Needless to say, the band of political opposing forces did nothing but squeeze this event to their fullest capacity to gain popular support at cost of denouncing the State.Now a second series of protests and insurgences are set to begin in the south (Cusco and Puno), after the government's approval rates sunk dramatically after the sequence in Bagua, seeking to weaken the State even further. No great positive project nor intellectual riot was needed: one merely enjoyed repeating incessantly how democracy was violated by an abuse of power, how the State showed its incompetence and violent ways, and how we must protect the democratic rights of those who live by ancestral heritage of the Amazonian land, letting their voice be heard. Bagua perhaps offers us the clearest index of how the dialectic of democratic freedom in communitarian protesting ultimately enacts a perverted simulacrum, an obscure institution of an avowal for freedom against the profound political difficulty dividing those marginally excluded from enjoying democratic freedom and the dark empire of the law.

The utter hypocrisy shared by the civilian protesters and the Nationalists is evident, they simultaneously enact the conditions for the natives' exclusion while exculpating themselves from responsibility, which is left to the horrific deeds of the State. The preceding facts were on the meantime discarded; the Nationalists and international influence with Pizango and the natives’ manipulation, the planning of the insurgence at the Andean congress, and the persisting road blockage which mobilized over 3,000 people under the belief that their land was about to be taken from them or that the State shouldn't in principle intervene in their land without marking their interests. The deaths of the policemen in the first stage of the conflict, presumably caused by the natives (it is not important to us whether this is false or true) could not stir the mass reaction, nor the political opposition. Of course, since facing the prospect of a hypothetical killing at the hands of the natives one couldn't exactly gripe against the violation of human rights against the policemen or the violent ways of the Baguan people. Only once the basic formula of State abuse became potentially applied to the case, the slothful humanitarian ruse began to echo in the cities and provinces.

So how does the language of protest operate in this dark complicity announced by Zizek at the beginning, and shared by the political opportunists? What strikes in the protesters' discourse is a direct generalization of the dialectics of responsibility, from the particular events of the massacre, to the hermeneutically legitimized origin of deficient dialog between the State and the people. The general reaction by the public thus emphasized how the tragedy of both policemen and natives was finally the responsibility of the State, and not shared or of different agent. So the political manipulation of the Aguarunan people by other political forces into misunderstanding decree 1090 / 1064 and rendering a road blockage was entirely passed over, as was the direct question about the origin of the shootings and the agents involved. It was also painfully clear that the Aguarunan people were not so much opposing decree 1090 as they were persuaded in that the State had no right to impose its will on their land. The obvious pathetic aftermath where the central government insisted on that this was a misunderstanding of the decree, only played in favor of those accusing them of incompetence. But of course, as the majority of protesters, the natives were at large not protesting any particular aspect of decree 1090; the former reacted against the State intrusion, the latter against the State apathy.

In the end whether the natives and political opposition had any responsibility in the course of the massacre was sadly obscured by the protester’s complicity in the escapist chant of 'freedom for the natives!' and for democracy. One shouldn't flinch in asserting that this patronizing gesture precisely coincides in the conception of the natives as poor victims integrated in a natural cosmovision, ruined by the corrupt government. But this general level of dialectical stupidity was easily answered to by the more agile governmental voices. They simply indicated how supporting the suspension of 1090/64, in 'respect' for the natives' reactionary fear against the privatization of the Amazonian land coupled with their insistence in preserving traditional land right as part of the native's cultural customs was reactionary to the natives' own benefit, and wide scale national interest. To the prospect of giving the natives the possibility to voice their own inadequacies against the State, being in a modernized socio-economical situation to incorporate themselves to the political process in which they don't depend on the cities for the mobilization of their political existence, the natives' call was in fact different from the protesters in the latter's insistence that there should be democratic dialog for the benefit of the excluded.

If anything, Garcia and the APRA was justified in pointing out this was first and foremost a resistance against the State, and not a particular discrepancy about how 1090 was fair, non practical or harmful. That the interests geared there were obviously not aimed towards helping the natives themselves can be said about the entire legal agenda of parliamentary politics, so the opposition was smart to concentrate on the banalities. The government finally signaled that opposition to 1090 blindly was reactionary and against the prospect of emancipation. (http://blog.otramirada.pe/2009/06/10/los-pueblos-amazonicos-marcan-un-desafio-al-)neoliberalismo/#more-313) This was in fact Garcia's posture: his recent declarations signal how the opposition to the legislation which opens the Amazonian territory to the liberal market prospect of industrialization and foreign investment in favor of the protection of the interest of the locals is reactionary and regressive with respect to the national interest to promote economic development. The same principle applies to those which react against these policies in protesting the violation of the native's legitimate rights to the Amazonian land. In the end, the governmental reaction can be to simply lay claims to being misunderstood, since the decree 1090 (as Minister Cabanillas, and the entire APRA parliamentary representation claims) is in the interest of the natives themselves, so that the land becomes productively used in the competitive scheme of national economy. Since modernization will allow the natives to gain unforeseen opportunities, against the reactionary fear of change in favor of preserving their exclusion, the opposition's demands can be said to coincide with the call for the integration of the communities and preoccupation about their socio political exclusion. This insistence by the president has been missed in its scope, as it was underlined for example in this much discussed piece by Bartolome Clavero's anti-governmental rant "Who Committed Genocide in Peru?" (http://clavero.derechosindigenas.org/?p=1595)

The governmental agenda to mobilize the Amazonian land for industrial purposes in potential intrusion to the rights of ownership of the natives has been made well explicit by reference to a concrete clause in decree 1090 ambiguously legitimizing the excepting of normal rights of propriety by recourse to the concept of ‘national interest’ (Rosa Maria Palacios was agile enough to point this out at the Start of her interview with minister Cabanillas). Of course, the ultimate paradox of this imbroglio is that the State is able to conflate the opposition's rejection of the unwillingness to grant democratic rights to those excluded with the rejection of the laws which would guarantee this emancipation. This has been the ground of the posterior attempt to save political face by the entire central government (from the ministry of interior, to Del Castillo, to Garcia himself…) by claiming this exception did not apply to the territory owned by the natives. That effectively this ‘national interest’ is nothing but the expectation of exploiting Amazonian resources (oil, agricultural produce…) for exports and edge in the competitive liberal market and not for the natives gets entirely passed over, and is of course, not the proper subject of ‘the debate’ (as reports show, three quarters of the Amazonian territory would be confined for the extraction of oil http://ja-jp.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=80363924455&ref=mf).

On the other hand, the protesters at large feel morally exorcised after the placebo of the public vociferation of insubstantial chants, since doing so they were included within the ranks of moralist declaration of horror against those in power. In the end, nothing substantial changes, and we still indulge on our merely virtual indignation. In other words, the seduction of the protesters can in fact be indexed in complicity with the State’s false emancipatory economical measures as the obverse side of a profoundly reactionary vision. The mass media reporting on the ‘poor communities’ and the bulk of their opposition allows this by positioning the natives under the patronizing gesture of avowing those integrated in the natural worldview, not yet contaminated by the hubris of the cities and the industrial-centered politics of the government. What this scope misses is how the very form of this discourse affirms the maintenance of the victims to the economical conditions which lead to their political inexistence; the skeptical resistance to the overturn of communal customs in favor of integrated policy submits the natives to permanently being the object for the pity of those who from the highly modernized cities have the means to protest in favor of democracy and against the violation of the cultural pristine life of the natives.

The catch is of course that the protesters achieve their mass support through technological means (internet chains, forums, media...) while at the same time resisting or not proposing any positive program for the natives to achieve the emancipation which would allow them to participate of this process, which invariably requires the intervention of the State into the life and land of the Amazonian territory. Thus the rejection of the decree 1090 is not supplemented by the protesters with any sort of project or proposal, nor even a hint of what a possible reformulation or different decree could look like; it remains confined to the negative rejection of the State activity, the violation of the natives' rights, and the triumphant affirmation of 'democracy' in the form of protesting. The decree which presumably would achieve this marvelous synchrony between the State and the preservation of the natives is but the ruse of those who, in hypocritical slothfulness, avow the suspension of the decree 1090 not having read it, or not even being in a position to begin proposing a possible solution. In fact, isn't it unsettling how these protests have finally more to do with those protesting than the actual victims of the conflict, or how the latter are used for moral exorcism or political opportunism? As far as proposals, guidelines, substantial opposition and the like goes, the protests remain sterile, with no positive discourse except the all too obvious call for integration, dialog and respect for freedom and life. On the other hand, the affirmation of the act of pacific protest as a democratic one is repeated endlessly, as are the slogans of democracy and freedom, in a vicious cycle of destructive opposition to the State. A great example of this perverse logic was exhibited by the general popular uproar to Bedoya Ugarteche's racist slants against the Aguarunan people in the press, which culminated in an ironic call for President Garcia to ready the napalm to bomb these violent natives.

The point is not to repeat the all too obvious moralist indignation against racism, but to realize how protesters act in complicity to it: the protesters' humanitarian ruse is effectively nothing but the vociferation of the general democratic slogans against the article, obscuring the situation (it's not about the 'law' but really about the cosmovision of the natives being endangered as a sign of totalitarian violence, of which the racism if a prime example, etc). One has to be suspicious at Ugarteche's article, if anything, because it seems too easy a target; it appears designed as an opportunistic attempt to gather clichéd polemics in the very heart of the situation, thereby extracting popular interest from the matter itself. Non surprisingly, a dozen replies to his article appeared immediately, insisting on the horrific display of racism in Ugarteche's writing and linking this ignorance to the State indifference to the situation of the Amazon. This 'hermeneutic temptation' is thereby easily reproduced to leave matters in the very comfortable surface of apparent disagreement. We should therefore insist in that this apparent emancipatory gesture of laying claim to the general platitudes of democracy and tolerance is in fact the tacit enacting of its very opposite; it is the smoke screen required for the slothful not to deal with the minute rigor required for internal politics, extracting it to a general example of mindless blather and obscuring the subjective agents, and exculpating them from the objective violence of their own complicity in this reactionary discourse. (http://www.correoperu.com.pe/correo/columnistas.php?txtEdi_id=4&txtSecci_parent=&txtSecci_id=84&txtNota_id=73466)

The other catch is of course that the sought synchrony between the natives in their worldview and the State integration is in fact formulated as an impossible demand. Since the natives do not oppose 1090 as much as fear State intervention into their land as a result of political manipulation (the Nationalists insisting on how the State seeks to exploit their land and property for the industrial prospect of the TLC with the United States…), so the rejection to the law is in fact generally political and not based on legal disagreement. Of course the turn of the screw provided by the protesters waters down this dark complicity in affirming that the natives are ultimately enraged at the lack of willingness of the State to discuss matters democratically, hypocritically allying to this outrage while they never appeared in the conflict before the conflict. This succeeded in shifting the axis of public attention to make the natives not so much concerned with the actual effects of State intervention and their obvious fear at the explotation of their land, as much as with following the correct democratic procedures. So in the end the pathetic condition of the people which are in no position to enter into the democratic dialog are reduced to allies of the democratic tenet of democratic equality. Sympathetically, the preservation of the Amazonian culture heritage was publicized as the chant of those excluded. But this of course obscured the deadlock of the natives’ insurgence itself in its contents. If the fear was directed against State intervention then, one must ask, how can we begin to think of a diplomatic procedure which could accomplish the sought for integration of natives and the Amazonian territory into the economic process of our liberal market economy? How can the multitude of tribes and people in the Amazon be incorporated into the formal demands of a paralyzing legal project, with infinite bureaucratic difficulties. The point is of course not that we should give up on including the Baguan people, but that by thinking of their indignation as being based on the claim for democracy we pass over the more fundamental tragic impotence in the Amazonian people to even address the law in its contents. It is thus remarkable how the opposition to decree 1090 at large has nothing concrete to say about the contents of the decree itself and how not single proposal has been made as to how to think this delimitation: the opposition, from the Nationalists to so called liberal protesters on the streets, rely on the ambiguous rejection of privatization and the call for dialog with no further specification of which politico-economical measures to take.

The retarded charges of 'genocide' and the New-Age avowal of nature and culture do nothing to penetrate the real separating people and politics. In the end, the protesters remain within the neo-hippie ethereal confines of platitudes which, like liberty and democracy, culture and nature, merely leave people where they are. The support for the rejection of the privatization of the land for the interests of national liberal market economy in favor of the non-privatization of these areas and the protection of the native rights ironically misses how the natives’ position also relies on the avowal of the privatization of this immense territory to their whims, or that of their own communities (if in fact the 12,000 hectares designated in decree 1090 for the 316,000 Amazonian people are not sufficient, but that the Amazonian territory in principle should not be subjected to this process of privatization). What are we to make of this all too obvious provincialist resistance? The ‘infuriated’ protesters can lay their support on the natives’ position even if this compromises at large the modernization and economic expansion of the country since, of course, their own vociferation lacks any substantial content to propose a different rule. It is difficult to find what these protesters effectively think should happen, probably because they just do not think a whole lot. A good example of this patronizing pity against the natives is perfectly rendered in this short article by Bartolome Clavero:

“The governmental declarations are situated in this line. While blood was being spilt, the President of the Republic, Alan Garcia, made some heated declarations in which, among other hurtful occurrences, he contraposed the selfish interests of hundreds of thousands of indigenous people against that of millions of Peruvians, as if the former where indigenous to their own land, as if the Peruvian State did not have the international responsibility of defending their human rights, those of its people, communities and indigenous communities. It is effectively interests against rights. Interests against people are those of the concessionary franchises encouraged and safeguarded by the government. Right facing private interests are recognized by indigenous peoples by International Human Rights linking of course Peru.” (http://clavero.derechosindigenas.org/?p=1595)

Coupled with the hypocritical avowal of the manipulated anxiety of the locals against decree 1090 and the conservative resistance to modernization is of course the humanitarian supplement of the protesters in their denouncement of the acts of violence occurred in the armed confrontation leading to the massacre, This pathetic ‘rejection of violence’ can be a clear example of how democratic liberal discourse’s explicit rejection of subjective violence (which leads to a clear agent, from individual to State) camouflages the objective violence which results from the normal functioning of the economy and its political discourse, State members and protesters alike. Here we have a prime example of this insipid disguise from this past 7th of June emitted by the General National Coordinator of Human Rights:

“We express our profound indignation against the use of violence, no matter where it comes from. We repudiate the excessive use of force from the police against the civil manifestation and the civil population, and with the same rigor we condemn the aggression and kidnapping of policemen from those who protest…” (http://www.noticia24.org/peru/coordinadora-nacional-de-dd-hh-no-a-la-violencia-en-bagua/, http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=93666417609&ref=nf)

The massive opposition in this reactionary motif can thus feel exculpated from the moral complicity with the true difficulty of clarifying the situation; the actual succession of events in Bagua of course remains obscure, as is the direct part of the State: we do not know if the police or natives attacked first, or if the police forces acted under direct orders (whose orders?), we ignore whether the insurgence began in fact from a deliberate misunderstanding of the proposed decree by the manipulation of the local leaders (Pizango being exiled in the Nicaraguan embassy), or the source for the native’s indignation (leading to a prior congress of the communities presumably in the presence of foreign powers).... One must notice this not so innocent shift from apparent democracy to a concrete partial index: for example in Clavero’s apparent democratic plea to not distinguish the deaths of policemen and natives, indexing the responsibility directly to the ‘government’ assigns responsibility to an ambiguous ‘general’ agent (who in the government is directly responsible?) obscuring the specificity of those responsible:

“Let us not confront figures of victims between natives and policemen. Let us not make the distinction… there are more and all victims of genocidal government” (http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=90962791654&h=VoyGA&u=_REF5&ref=mf)”

Of course what is missing in this sea of generality is the action of concrete agents: the manipulation of the natives leading to their misinformed rejection, the international call for insurgence in complicity with Pizango and the inefficiency of the State to avoid its influence, ignorance about the explosion of the massacre and the origin of orders if existent. The ascription of ‘government’ as the tyrannical purveyor of genocide is but a more sophisticated extension of the obscure appeals to freedom and other general platitudes rather than tackling the real issue, in an ego-trip to present one’s position as in conformity with the benevolent ranks of democratic liberal ideology. None of the pending issues about Bagua are yet clear; the political responsibility of this massacre, and the enormous difficulty which presents the construction of a new path towards the integration of the native communities to our socio-political world, or the vision of a different world altogether, remains untouched in this pathetic sequence. This ridiculity was only reproduced by the idiotic carnival at congress in charge of the Nationalist parliamentarians this past June 11th, which resulted in their (justified) suspension, only serving to petrify the very much needed parliamentary action, in favor of political exhibitionism to create uproar and stir mindless followers (nothing was more emblematically stupid than their communal singing of the national anthem while the country demands an answer to these tragedies)

Without answers to these questions, we have no means to assign responsibilities and fight towards a new constructive path. The dead disappear at the margins of a constellation in which the self-indulgent belying of the State in the light of democratic liberty camouflages the responsibility of concrete agents, and the necessity for concrete measures. What we must understand is that this apparent resistance obscures the relation between State and civilians, between the law and its excluded, the State in general and its particular agents (who gave the orders?), between the international powers and the regional governments, etc. The protesters finally can project the form of indignation to protect their own privileged position from the distance, and avow the democratic power in a frivolous march. That this does not mean anything but that a period of false failed diplomacy will follow, and nothing will change, is only too obvious. For it wasn't about 1090 from the start. After congress announced the dissolution of 1090 and 1064, the natives still remain blocking the road. And congress will still interpolate Minister Simon and Cabanillas. In fact, the APRA had no choice but to support the derogation at Parliament, as Mauricio Mulder claimed ‘for State reasons’ (political pressure). It wasn't about the rights of the dead or those of the living either. It was about how the lack of rights for the dead could serve as a platform for political propaganda, for reactionary obscurantism, and an excuse for democratic celebration. Our reality is to sacrifice the dead to the mindless chant of moralists and humanitarians. These are the voices which gather in parties to discuss their progress in college while they merrily march with lit candles in 'homage to the dead', the minimal gesture given when they can no longer simply look back in apathic slothfulness. Empty words and fading candles. Is that what our democracy is made of?

The Question Concerning 'The Question Concerning Technology"

Heidegger’s critique of modern technology arises from the perspective of thinking the loss of a pre-modern ‘wisdom’ in which technological life (techné) was not yet conceived from the purview of instrumentality; it is only through the modern interpretation of technology as a mere means to an end that the bringing-forth (Hervorbringen) proper of technical life is put to the service of exploiting nature (physis) as standing-reserve [Bestand]. In this process, Heidegger tells us, nature is no longer conceived as something to be taken care of in order to benefit from it, like the farmer who works the land for the crop he uses; nature is deliberately challenged (Herausfordern) and set (Stellen) to obtain and amass energy from it; the gift of being in unconcealment (Unverborgenheit) is reduced by modern science to make the whole of nature subservient the whims of industry in production, to accumulation and consumption.

”And yet the revealing that holds sway throughout modern technology does not unfold into a bringing-forth in the sense of poiesis. The revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging [Herausfordern], which puts nature to the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such. But does this not hold true for the old windmill as well? No. Its sails do indeed turn in the wind; they are left empty entirely to the wind’s blowing. But the windmill does no unlock energy from the air currents in order to store it.”

It is thus easy to see why for Heidegger the whole theme of Ereignis circles around the possibility of appropriating the proper metaphysical origins of the first beginning of thought and that this appropriation also requires a regression to a time before the advent of metaphysics in search for the old, lost wisdom. The properly Greek beginning signals this origin, where resonates the word of the poet for whom the world is not yet a stock in reserve. Through this appropriation of the past, Dasein becomes attuned as the caretaker of being and recognizes himself in bearing the gift of its truth (aletheia). That modern technology is quintessentially different for Heidegger than in pre-modern thought should not make us forget that this tragic outcome is also the ultimate consequence of the inaugural epoch of Western (Greek) metaphysics. Even if the transformation of nature into standing-reserve occurs only when Greek concepts are watered down by Rome’s misinterpretation and the subsequent assignment of technology to modern physics, this is well beside the point. The key resides in that even in the Greek beginning the essential forgetfulness took place, which of course for Heidegger is ultimately why a second beginning is necessary, and not just properly a return. The regression is thus meant to recover the wisdom that will allow us to move beyond the first beginning in the leap into being-historical thinking.

Against Heidegger's hermeneutic effort we should emphasize how what he perceives as the tragic outcome of modernity, triggered by the forgetfulness of being, already latently suggests there is pathetically nothing to remember. For isn’t it relatively easy to show, contra Heidegger, that in fact the fisherman who uses salt to preserve foods also deals with nature in order to be capable of stockpiling goods/energy? And isn’t it that the proverbial well from which the man from the mountains draws buckets of water serves effectively as a standing storage to be exploited and used? The thesis that suggests itself (developed among others by Bernard Stiegler in his extensive La technique et le temps) is that the attitude of Enframing (Ge-stell) and treating nature as standing-reserve is not just proper to modern thinking, but to all technical life as such, and that this attitude, far from being the mere result of forgetting the past, is actually the necessary form in which human existence (Dasein) develops. In this way, the transformation of nature into a reservoir of resources appears as the exemplary gesture of Dasein metaphysical existence.

The whole theme of a Greek re-appropriation can then appear but hopelessly short-sighted- the manipulation of nature and its instrumentalization (rendered in the very passage from Zuhandenheit to Vorhandenheit) obtains precisely from the forgetting of the gesture of the gift; of objectivizing and tearing apart nature from its organic totality in order to objectivize it; to dissect and preserve it as the means for some concrete human endeavour. The prospect of a leap into a second-beginning for the West, beyond the first metaphysical beginning, is thus rendered a provincialist/mystical illusion; man cannot escape his metaphysical dimension insofar as it challenges the world and nature to the concept- what Hegel called the ‘night of the World’). And doesn't the Beitrage’s call for a thinking which favors silence already tacitly suggest that the only way to sneak out of metaphysics is properly by an attitude of Gelsassenheit, apolitical apathy, inertia, or a simulation of the Eastern Buddhist theme of silencing and self-annihilation? Here we should recall Zizek’s reminder about the Hegelian movement of sublation, developed apropos of the recurring New-Age theme of recovering the wisdom of the ancient world:

“Here we have the properly Hegelian matrix of development: the Fall is already in itself its own self-sublation; the would is already in itself its own healing so that the perception that we are dealing with the Fall is ultimately a misperception, an effect of our skewed perspective… The problem with the ‘Western mechanistic attitude’ is not that it forgot-repressed the ancient holistic Wisdom, but that it did not break with it thoroughly enough: it continued to perceive the new universe (of discursive stance) from the perspective of the old one, of the ‘ancient wisdom’; and of course, from this perspective the new universe cannot but appear as the catastrophic world which comes about ‘after the Fall’. We rise again from the ‘Fall not by undoing its effects but in recognizing in the Fall itself the longed-for liberation.” [Ticklish Subject, Pg. 70-71]

And isn’t the structure of this self-sublating logic perfectly applicable to Heidegger’s position? On a first moment, the ultimate outcome of the Western instrumental attitude in modern technology is rooted in a forgetfulness being, starting in Greece; what we must do is recover this wisdom and leap outside of our derailed epoch and its sombre outcome. The additional turn of the screw happens then when we acknowledge that the tragic outcome is not only guaranteed by the forgetfulness of the beginning, but only perceived as tragic as long as we don’t realize that the sought for appropriation of the origin coincides with its tragic result. What Heidegger thus fails to realize is that the mechanistic attitude of man is only perceived as a deterioration from the forgetting of being if we ourselves forget that already Greek thought (doubtless since the very origin of man) was made possible on the basis on such a forgetting; the moment we realize Enframing does not result from the loss of a past we can safely overcome, but that it is inscribed in the very form of the past itself, we realize the tragedy of modern technology coincides with the appropriation of its origin. Put bluntly: no deterioration ever happened since nothing was ever genuinely lost that could signal the possibility of leaping into a ‘second beginning’, modern technology, far from being a contingent outcome triggered by the loss of ancient wisdom, is actually its truth actualized.

We can also see this nostalgic venture as the repetition of the fundamental ideological gesture of 'claiming distance to the text', which Zizek reproaches to Heidegger apropos his Nazi engagement, since the latter was triggered by the metaphysical expectation that a political program could simultaneously be self-aware of its historico-ontological conditions. The usual Heideggerean retort that the conferal of dignity to National Socialism was a mistake grounded in not freeing itself from the transcendental approach radically enough; the properly Heideggerean lesson is on the contrary to assert the insurmountable gap between the ontological and the ontic, never reducing the former to a particular form of the latter. So ultimately when Zizek accuses Heidegger for assuming that a political programme could at the same time be self aware of its historico-ontological conditions he in fact denies that simply by missing to acknowledge this gap we arrive at National Socialism (or any political programme without 'inner greatness', like communism or liberal democracy); the gap is constitutive for any political programme as such. So, finally, Heidegger's ideological gesture of claiming Nazism had an 'inner greatness' excluded from the specific ontic configuration of racial biology, remains particular in that it still assigns authentic ontological dignity to an specific political vision, and not just by assuming this dignity is possible rather than making this gap constitutive.

In the same way, this gesture is repeated in Heidegger's critique of modern technology by appeal to the pre-modern non instrumental attitude towards Nature. The usual story goes that after the Kehre Heidegger had shifted the axis of his approach from the (still transcendental) project of a fundamental ontology to being-historical thinking, where the full consequences of the break with transcendental philosophy is finally achieved. But isn''t the leap into beyn-historical thinking, or a post-instrumental conception of technology precisely that which serves as the historical variant of approaching transcendental 'inner greatness', whose mystery is locked in the pre-modern past, in the long-forgotten Greek origins? So when Heidegger thinks that it is possible to overcome tmodern echnology's perverse instrumentalization of Nature by recourse to the hermeneutic leap outside metaphysics, does he not thereby remain locked in the aspiration of such a homology between the indeterminate ontological truth which forever separates being from beings (metaphysics) and a positive relation to Nature? It should come as no surprise, then, that this envisioned second beginning results in a strange quasi-Eastern apolitical stance of Gelassenheit, a listening attitude to being's call in the open. Against this view, we must resist the apolitical temptation and claim that this envisioned symmetry is itself already marred by the transcendental approach Heidegger seeks to overcome (this point was rendered similarly in Derrida's explosive indexing of Spirit as the un-deconstructed underlying concept lurking in Heidegger's thought). We should insist that on the other hand this gap between the ontological foundations and the dissection of Nature is precisely constitutive for our relationship to Nature as such; there is no possible homology between being and Nature since it is only in the subject's constitutive negation of Nature as an organic whole and its dissection that it appears as such.

It is for this reason that Alain Badiou demarcated Heidegger’s endeavour to submit technology at the centre of the philosophical problem as ultimately part of the same pomposity that New-Age mystics infused with provincialist nostalgia share. If man is irrevocably a technological being in that it always seeks to tear nature apart from its organic totality, if the subject is indeed nothing but the radical negativity of what Hegel called 'The Night of the World', then rather than to attempt an escape from metaphysics, we must fully assume our metaphysical dimension and run with it. So Badiou is able to conclude, mockingly, that if there are any regrets with respect to technology it is only that it is “still so rudimentary”.

Badiou's Naturalization of Communism as a Political Generic Procedure

Some interesting moments happen towards the end of this short conversation when Badiou was accused of resting on mere 'faith' to legitimize communism as the correct idea for communitarian emancipation. Badiou appeals to the proper vision of a society 'without classes' as the general content of the communist idea, but struggles to make it more substantial than the proverbial ideological cliché of democracy which advocates a society 'without racial/sexist/ethnic discrimination' for everybody. Through communism we know oppression can be thought of in terms of class struggle; just as we know the importance of opposing racism, sexism and ethnocentrism from the agenda of liberal democracy. The critique Badiou brings forth against the democratic tenets of freedom of culture, individual expression and human rights does not, by itself, tell us how to move beyond communism qua the expression of a class into a general platitude for social justice any more than the democratic liberal discourse.

This is why I am tempted to suggest that popular emancipation remains too banal a concept, too general an aim, to warrant the maintenance of the name 'communism' as the horizon for political activity; and certainly insufficient to justify the necessity of going back to a primitive Idea of communism (such as Marxist theory). The desire to keep this name in circulation as the only possible route towards political change seems to me to require the leftist nostalgia Badiou must inevitably sink into given his intimate political/theoretical activity, his involvement through the events of May 68, and the political allegiances of his mentors. For if the idea of class struggle is no longer proper only to communism (as it has in fact been virtually appropriated into all Western political discourses) and this idea is no longer sufficient (as Badiou says, the sequence of traditional revolutionary politics as expressing the social contradictions of class struggle is finished) then what remains to communism seems the ether of equality and justice. This can hardly guide us in the arduous task of preparing a new framework for today’s sociopolitical organization, away from the limitations of liberal democracy and today's capitalism.

On the other hand, I find myself close to Badiou in that the crisis serves as a reminder that the political remains a task for thought. Something new has to be built; a new logical framework which can singularly help us go beyond the classical revolutionary politics which were experimented during the 20th Century. But this new logic and new world can also be something new, something for which there is yet no name, not even communism, a beginning of a beginning. Making the name of communism tantamount to social justice (perhaps best captured by Sartre’s claim that whoever is not a communist is a dog) is something like the inscription of an eternal name, a historically indisplaceable truth event, a normativized/naturalized political generic procedure. Put bluntly: it would positivize communism as the only path towards political novelty. The impasse is rather not knowing what this 'new framework' will look like and its incalculable distance- to be incapable of determined now, within the situation, which struggles will be included or belong across its process, and through which names this will happen. Without this, we cannot know what can supplant the contemporary situation in its ongoing course.

To summarize, we can agree with Badiou in that the future of politics remains a task for thought, but we should be cautious about remaining within the scope of communism simply because it seems rather trivial to appeal to popular emancipation as being proper to it. Revolutionary politics certainly entails distance from the State, and the construction of a new truth (a new generic procedure). Even if we must presuppose communitarian emancipation, the point is that without anything else it is quite impossible to distinguish that tenet as being proper to communism; it can also be said to be the idea behind human rights' generalized freedom from oppression or tyranny (communism does for class what liberalism does for race, sex and ethnicity). We still need a firmer ground to lay the bricks.

Monotheistic Violence or Zizek's Religious Temptation

Because of this I see the entire separation between tolerant 'authentic' monotheism and its violent excess as repeating the fundamental ideological gesture of claiming distance from the text. Perhaps we should supplement Zizek's thesis that being oblivious to this distance is a precondition of political activity, and extend it to religious activity as well. By claiming the excess of violence in (pseudo) monotheistic religion is proper only to its tacit polytheistic underside masks the inherent violence of any true monotheism, which consists in closing the separation between its singular discourse and the other's expression, where the latter is reduced to the former. Concretely to follow with our example, the violence advanced by Christian monotheism does not proceed from accepting the other Gods as merely 'false'; but on reducing them to being a pathological expression of some failure to abide to the norm of the monotheistic discourse (the terrorist’s proclamation of the sacred duty of the 'sons of Ala' is but the delusional influence of the corruption of the community of Christian values in sin, it's the devil's work, failure to recognize the true grace of the Lord in the community of Christian brotherhood, etc).

Monotheism bears this necessary violence intrinsically to its very discourse; it already prescribes the legitimate suppression of acts which do not comply to the normal integration to the religious community. Zizek's fault repeats the precise ideological gesture marked by monotheism- he dismisses examples of violence in self-proclaimed monotheisms as pathological examples of a quieter, apprehensive 'true' monotheism. The attack on the concept of fundamentalism must thus avoid this reference to true monotheism as a potential aspiration (unsurprisingly, Zizek himself finds in so-called true monotheists like the Amish a generally agreeable archetype which he jokingly suggests should increase in numbers).

Alain Badiou - What is Freedom?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q_FQj9fo6A&feature=related

In this post I offer a short and simplified elucidation of what Badiou opposes against the notion of freedom in 'expressive dialectics'. Against the relativization of truth, subjectivity and freedom to the sphere of individuals and cultures, bodies and languages, Badiou relates freedom to his doctrine of the event. An event for Badiou is an occurance which exceeds and resists its appropriation by the state in the situation where it happens, and which thereby opens the possibility for a new process of truth. A subject is the one who maintains fidelity to the event of truth, and which carries forth its consequences in a series of enquiries. The subject is thus always local; there are some subjects at some moments in the process of the unfolding of a truth. It is essentially distinguished from the traditional subject qua individual, or substance. For Badiou a subject is always creative in the sense that it opens new possibilities, and gradually works to develop them creating new situations.

Truth procedures are of four kinds (as a matter of historical fact, not in principle): scientific, political, artistic and amorous. An event is the emergence of a new scientific theory, a sequence of revolutionary politics, a new artistic school or a new love. Analogously, a subject would be the radical decision to remain faithful to the consequences opened by the event: Newton, Schoenenberg, Lenin, and Proust all become subjects insofar as they produce a new situation by remaining faithful to an event which disrupts the normality of the state, and begin a process which ultimately creates a new situation. That being said, we can offer the following clarificatory remarks to Badiou's exposition on the freedom of the subject, and its distinction from expressive dialectics:

1) Freedom cannot be expression in the sense of a harmony between the individual and the state of the situation: this means that freedom does not emergesin the possibility of merely reconlicing the desire of the self with the demands of state, or in the expressivity of the first within the possibilities offered by the latter. It is not a dialog between the body which makes up an individual and the social sphere to which he belongs. Rather, freedom emerges in carrying out the consequences of an event that, as a process, produces a new situation. This procedure is the action of a millitant subject of truth; the subject does not express itself, but essentially exists as a moment in the creation of a new subject (of science, politics, art or love). The subject of truth is exactly that: the local moment committed to chance in an specific enquiry, within the generic procedure which constitutes the unfolding of a truth inside the situation.

2) Freedom is not the expression of the individual self; it is always a choice against ourselves: Since we are imbedded into a situation which is regulated by the state, the expression of the individual will inside a culture is the direct expression of its prescriptions and what is admitted as knowledge inside of it- it is not an act of freedom, since by expressing itself it is already constituted by what the state determines. The imperative of enjoyment, of self creation, the roles and classes which an individual can adopt as expressive gestures of his freedom are already incorporated by the state. The gesture of expression and of recognition remains thus within that which is identifiable by the state .The subject of truth is on the other hand a fragment in an specific moment of fidelity within a truth procedure, which is fundamentally outside the objectivity of the situation where it happens. We can say, to use another of Badious's terms, that a truth is subtracted from the objectivity of situation. It is not a mere negation of the state, it is essentially a new framework for the organization of the multplicities which conform the situation.

Given that we are never simply spontaneously free in expression, and since we are subjected to the injuctions of the State (properly the unconscious of ideology) freedom cannot be the expression of a body or culture (say, of class struggle, or the working class, of the party, of african americans, homosexuals, and so on). Those names are already a part of the situation and not, as in traditional revolutionary politics, something which emerges as the possibility of expressing that which was until then impossible. Classes are, in the battlefield of contemporaneity, already part of the democratic state, and not the potency for freedom.
3) Summary and Overview: The expressive attempt to seek a harmony between social expression and individual desire is tantamount to a continuation of the normality of the state, and not of freedom. As we said, freedom is a production in that in does not coincide with the possible of the state, and so it is not achieved by seeking a harmony with it. It is not merely the subjective pronounciation in the social field, but the creation of something which opens a new field for expression, a new possibility previously impossible or unthought.

To summarize: freedom is in the side of the subject, of truth, of the event, of struggle and novelty.

Non-freedom is in the side of the individual, of knowledge, and of the state, of submission to the norm, whether explicit or implicit, and fundamentally included (represented) in the situation.

4) Finally, this is why we can say that both:

a) 'There are only individuals and cultures...': inside any particular situation what appears are bodies and cultures, individuals and the states which regulate them.

b) '...but there are universal truths': a truth bores a hole in established knowledge; something happens which is not under the regulation of the state, a subject emerges in fidelity to an event and its consequences, which are not relative to any given bodies or languages in the situation, even if the situation is strictly only composed of them. It is an 'inventile exception' to the state of the situation, and so outside the sphere of knowledge.

Against Historicist Hermeneutics

Our epoch’s ethical orientation can be best summarized as that of an avowal of a hermeneutic understanding of human nature, and of a restriction of the notion of politics to the sphere of cultural conflicts. This hermeneutic understanding begins by opposing itself to the modern univocal conception of human reason and nature by which we could safely judge different propositions, cultures, historical periods and forms of life. Thus, in a somewhat post-modern fashion, the hermeneutic orientation begins by pairing the Nietzschean suspicion against universal truths with the hermeneutic historicism proper to Heidegger or Gadamer, in order to delimit the methodological principles prior to ethics or politics. Since reason and truth are context-sensitive, it follows that an ethical questioning seeking to incorporate multiple cultures must avoid reductionisms to any one particular conception of reason, and must rather be receptive to understanding the plurality of discourses and forms of life in their dignified difference. What we have all in common is that we are all in fact different, unique individuals, in a world sharing various cultures, customs and idioms. In this sense the hermeneutic vision accepts reason as the democratic tribunal for the pacified exchange between distinct cultures in the common project of mutual understanding and of an effective politics. We may thus speak, following Badiou, of an equation between philosophy qua the discourse of the being of truth and democracy. The democratic principle tells us that all individuals and cultures are free to participate in the dialog of ethics or politics, and present their own views and opinions. Furthermore, it asserts that no subject is in principle excluded from the opportunity to participate in the dialog of reason, and so (in Badiou's language) the axiom of 'equality of minds' proposes a tribunal of practical reason which welcomes the alterity of Otherness in its fullness, and escapes the dark destiny of metaphysics once and for all.

A forgetfulness of this democratic principle, or so the hermeneutic story goes, follows to the barbarities of violence, discrimination, struggle, and war. Evil is seen as a continuation of the metaphysical violence of an ethnocentric conception of reason and is thus equated to non-democracy. If we fail to obtain a hermeneutic understanding of truth, we fold back into the metaphysical violence of onto-theology, the elevation of an entity or being into the rank of God, or supreme guarantor of knowledge, and thus to the horrors proper to totalitarian terror and the non-democratic excesses of power. Against a representationalist conception of truth which sees the intellect as mirroring the world and the task of reason as proving a singular unifying discourse about the real, a hermeneutic conception sees truth as the structural worldview proper to a peculiar culture and historical time. Against the metaphysical understanding of ethics which sees practical reason as the transparent tribunal to the universality of the Law, the hermeneutic version anthropologizes ethics in favor of a contextualism of tolerance, admitting the plurality of cultures and ways of life in their own dignity. In sum, whereas the old metaphysics identifies reason with similarity and the supression of alterity by seeking foundations, the hermeneutic worldview sees alterity as foundational for identity. It rests on accepting alterity by first accepting the radical finitude of our being and the openness of truth for human thought. By historicizing truth, the task of reason becomes fusion (in Gadamer’s sense) rather than reduction, multitude rather than foundation, the openness of contingency as opposed to the closed spectrum of universality or necessity.

The multiplicity of cultures and forms of life is accepted and protected under the banner of democratic freedom. To the axiom of equality of minds we may thus supplement that the anthropologization of ethics in our times proposes an axiom of equality of cultures. Not only are individuals free and ends in themselves qua individuals, like Kant proposed, but all cultures and traditions share this integrity as well. The fascination of our contemporary notion of human rights, for example, seeks both to secure the liberties of the individual as well as those of the forms of life he/she integrates; the individual is to be protected as the one who harbours the historical truth of his time and of his freedom to participate in a distinctive way in a world. We can thus summarize this principle along Badiou in saying that for today's political ideology there are only bodies and languages, only individuals and cultures.

Since the hermeneutic orientation of thought assigns no ontotheological privilege to any one conception of reason or truth, there are no available procedures to disavow an ethical position in principle. Ethical truth can only attain the rank of universality, paradoxically, by accepting the possibility that the objectivity it claims for itself is not transitive to other situations. So in this view the ultimate horizon for ethical truth is in fact the democratic openness to dialog and discourse, always relative to culture and history. More than a plain relativism in which all judgments or opinions are equivalent, the axioms of equality of minds and cultures value the recognition of plurality and thus equate evil to the denouncement of Otherness, or what amounts to the same here, to non-democracy.

I would claim that this democratic fetishism found in the hermeneutic understanding of ethics goes even further in its dialectics. Not only are individuals and cultures equal in principle, but it is precisely because the ultimate horizon for the understanding of intersubjectivity is found in the historicizing of truth that an individual ought to be free to live in the way he chooses. The universality of freedom of choice supervenes on the ethical neutrality of the choices one is free to choose from. The individual must be protected because he harbors in his life the truth of his own freedom. Since the hermeneutic view opens its tribunal to all cultures and forms of life, to all debates and questions, then freedom of choice and expression can be safeguarded under the banner of democratic legitimacy and protected from the tyranny of totalitarian terror.

The consequences of this view are far reaching and obviously complicated for these purposes. I will try to summarize what I take to be four of the most important results of the hermeneutic vision of the world, drawing from the works of Badiou, Zizek and Agamben:

1) Procedures of constructive politics are expected to not exceed their situational dimension. This is to say that a local project in politics should not be construed in such a way that by its criteria and formulation, its effects are transposed to other situations in which such criteria might not be assumed, validated or wanted. The universality of human rights will safeguard the independence of nations and cultures, and thus condemn traditional revolutionary politics as acts of barbarism and all acts of violence as in principle reprehensible. The localization of truth within a democratic framework neutralizes all revolutionary attempts to oppose this democratization as acts of irrational violence against the sovereignty of freedom, democracy and human rights. As Badiou puts it "The return of the old doctrine of the natural rights of man is obviously linked to the collapse of revolutionary Marxism."

2) Since within the historicist dimension reason cannot exceed the admission of the multitude of ways of life, political procedures are assigned to culture as the cornerstone for ethico-political debate. Politics and ethics are seen as tantamount to questions about cultural/ethico/religious/political freedoms, rights of cultural minorities, ethnic groups, and so on. The inability to exceed local situations entails politics must remain intra-situational, and thus confined to expert-knowledge and specialization. There are no longer truly political questions to overlap with ethics, since there is no longer the aspiration for a new common body of politics beyond the fusion of distinct horizons in cultural dialog. Cultural difference takes the place of the political by becoming the body of a human ethics, an ethics of cultural democracy.

Democracy in this way substantializes cultures as the objective bodies which participate in the political process of politics. Thus the preservation of multiculturalism entails that whoever opposes the democratic vision of the rights of man (Muslims, fundamentalists, communists, terrorists) is excluded, criminal or tyranical. To assert as a principle the fundamental opposition to another form of life, to be intolerant to the Other is to err, to sin, to violate. Tolerance only for those who tolerate democracy. (This entire procedure of human rights can be read in the succession of wars in the name of democracy which took place during the 20^th Century as part of the crusade for ‘freedom’).

3) Individuality or particularity is more important for politics than equality or universality. The imperative to respect and conserve alterity qua the plurality of ways of life and cultures, as well as the rights of the individual to freely act, compete and develop him or herself within the democratic framework exceeds the consideration of whether there is in fact equality in the situation admitted by assigning politics to culture. The priority of freedom over equality is equivalent to the priority of enjoyment over justice. The emerging result can be viewed, as Badiou has pointed out, as that of a monstrous inequality within our Western countries and especially outside them, suggesting that “…maybe this absence of justice is the price we have to pay for freedom.”

4) As Slavoj Zizek has remarked, the old Aristotelian logic of the right measure is replaced by the injunction to enjoy as part of the constitution of the free subject. We obtain the equation identity equals freedom and freedom equals the freedom to enjoy. The freedom to affirm one’s roles and identity presupposes the availability of cultural elements and identities as something one can legitimately purchase or claim for one’s own. The objectification of culture into the object of politics is adjacent to the objectification of cultural symbols as the currency of the economy in which subjects effectively participate and in which they are constituted as such. Within capitalist market dynamics this takes the form of the radical purchase of traits, products and symbols, i.e. from fashion statements, to medical implants, to the new-age obscurantist search for trans-cultural experiences, ‘food-court’ ideology, and so on. By the same token, the exclusion of an individual from the socio-political process is tantamount to the limited access to the resources of this identification; the excluded are in fact those who are not free to enjoy and to define themselves through the assimilation of a unique identity. It thus becomes a case, to run once more along Badiou’s terminology, of a nihilistic democratic materialism, i.e. the radical purchase and disposal of all bodies. The nihilistic disavowal of meaning in the world is supplemented by the injunction of the emancipation of the individual, the call of self-creation and freedom through the elevation of the living body and the aspiration to enjoyment. It is thus both a biopolitcs of life adjacent to the hedonist creed; the excess of enjoyment is but the obverse supplement of the denial of meaning, or hedonism is the obverse of nihilism.

Once our metaphysical shackles have been loosened, the individual can in fact participate in respectful democratic dialog: he no longer seeks reductions but admitts plurality, he asserts his own position but is equally tolerant to the Other. Within the dialectics of democratic materialism, the ethical neutrality of the roles one assumes allows the constant production of roles and symbols to remain in circulation to guarantee the possibility of genuine subjects. On the other hand, the hermeneutic promise for an impartial world in which horizons are fused and in which tolerance abolishes violence easily becomes suspect once the long succession of wars under the banner of democratic freedom and human rights is put to the test. The dialectic of multicultural understanding proposes a dialog between different cultures in which the integral limits of each agent are effectively ‘fused’ or ‘expanded’ through some diplomatic procedure. To review, the obscenity of this lax logic of understanding can be roughly sketched argumentatively as follows:

a) Truth and reason is context-dependent, and not univocal or subsumable under a singular ideal of reason (anti-metaphysical foundation).

b) An ethical program that seeks to fairly consider the views and opinions of other cultures and individuals cannot begin by imposing/transposing the conceptual structures of one culture to the other, since this amounts to ignoring the uniqueness and distinctiveness of each culture.
c) Ethics thus amounts to a process of dialog in which each identity affirms itself in its radical uniqueness, the prospect of a reduction betrays context-dependency; one can at best hope for a genealogical anthropology in which the views and language of the Other are respected in their uniqueness.

And yet the promise of a democratic sphere of dialog is substantiated amidst the violence of the Western world through the very unclear notion of a ‘fusion of horizons’. We claim respect for the Other does not amount to the suppression of difference, but the admission of his radical alterity. And yet this alterity remains entrapped in regurgitating the old anti-Metaphysical slogan that reverberated in Nietzsche’s thought, announcing the death of God; or through Heidegger as the death of metaphysics. The slogans of tolerance and multicultural dialog effectively dismiss how it is to one standard that the freedom to enjoy grants respect and bows to: the democratic one. To Zizek’s challenge “Would we say Hitler was perceived as an enemy of humanity because we didn’t hear his own side of the story?” the democratic trend of thought reiterates “No! precisely because Hitler represented a totalitarian power we can say that only through dialog and democracy we can reach ethical truth for which the name is justice.” But if it is this sort of justice we take as the destiny of thought and life then we can go along with Badiou to the end and plainly state: no democracy for the enemies of democracy, no freedom for those who oppose freedom. The freedom of culture or choice thus becomes reducible to the following paradoxical qualification to the commandment of freedom: “you are free to do what you want, on the condition that you do the right thing”. The justice is tantamount to opposing the non-democratic world is perhaps too visceral a claim to consider, reason for which the slogans of tolerance and dialog can effectively coat the violence of our times behind the ideologicalfacade of humanitarian nobility.

With this prospect in mind, we can clearly demarcate the democratic project as propagating a culture without believers, a decaffeinated culture. Muslims yes, without fundamentalism, without violence. Freedom of choice, yes, as long as the choice agrees with the democratic principle and its rule. One is free to choose the cultural symbols and roles one desires freely as long as these roles are already deprived of that which effectively separates them from democracy. The objectification of culture is in this way dissolved within the prospect of a globalized world in which horizons are fused; only that those who must pay for our freedom are those whose freedom is unknowingly stepped over.

What is then the role that philosophy plays in this infinitely open dimension for dialog? If hermeneutics wants to go beyond the trivial relativist claim that different situations exist, it must rely in the proposal of an operator of consensus; the 'fusion of horizons' cannot be concentrated in the patronizing gesture of acknowledging alterity. The formal requirement that philosophy imposes is that of a criterion for objective consequences, criteria for the rational discussion to emerge. The problem then does not come in the inoffensive plea to recognize the Other, but in determining the conditions under which reason must be capable of disagreeing. Put somewhat differently, one can say the task is proposing constructive criteria which restrict what can be legitimately accepted as a respectable position. Instead of avowing an all-embracing prospect of tolerance unconsciously submitted to the rule of democratic freedom we must be ready to contest the democratic fetish. Along with Zizek, we can agree in that tolerance functions de facto as its opposite; the rule of tolerance is not the abolishing of rules, but precisely making the protection of individual liberties from harassment the priority for the State. And it is indeed only within the liberal equation of happiness to the purchase of identities within a cultural idiom that we can fundamentally oppose the non-democratic vision of the world. This obsession for a 'respect for the Other' can perhaps then be exemplified in the Anglo-Saxon qualification preceding any affirmative proposal: 'in my opinion...'.

We can safely dispense of whatever completes such claims inside a purely relativistic framework; but hermeneutics seeks more than that. The 'fusion of horizons' seeks the democratic agreement and expansion of views through a peaceful exchange in dialog. And yet beyond the fascination of alterity, the democratic world restricts the free exercise of the views which it neutrally considers. No democracy for the enemies of democracy. No freedom for the enemies of freedom. The barbarity of this circular logic should appear less compelling now than it did to vulgar skepticism. The problem seems thus that once we go beyond the 'deconstruction' of the ethnocentric modern conception of reason, and the genealogical reconstruction of Otherness through the hermeneutic method, we still lack the means to construct a new logical framework for the construction of a prescriptive new politics. Until then, the 'fusion of horizons' might appear as the helpless obscurantist chant of philosophers, extending the historicist romanticism which readily unveils but does not confront. The obsession with enjoyment and the terror of violence can thus safely continue its course without any threat from the theoreticians. At least not for now.

Against the Ageless Stones

Let us explode, in this quiet now
And close the gap that arches our soil
With the toil of memory and sacred truth,
Let us build the unfathomed link
To bind the old world, and show
How indifferent was the hiss
That sang those few who walked the shore

Let's lead astray the prowling voice,
And sink our nails into strident noise
May the tilting nerve resist the chord
And gouge our hearts for the good of all

Let our frail arms be a world
And hunt down the ascending moons
That light clear stars from veils in void
And may we never lay in the cozy mourn,
Whose slumbering rule now blinks through blight
And pats in the back the ruse to avoid
Blight’s aching glow

To shovel the pale earth’s loam,
And sow the promise of new names
To call those out…
Nothing more,
Not an inch, not a sound

Hush now...
Let us break
The insolent noise

Hush now, listen…

To the gist of those left lost