topic by
John Calvin
5/1/2002 (19:29) |
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The Spirit of Terrorism
By Jean Baudrillard
[excerpts]
'...All the discourses and commentaries betray a gigantic suturing of the event itself, and of the fascination it commands. The moral condemnation, the holy alliance against terrorism are on the scale of the prodigious jubilation at seeing this world superpower destroyed, or better, seeing it somehow destroy itself, in a beautiful suicide. Because with its unbearable power it has fomented this violence pervading the world, along with the terrorist imagination that inhabits all of us, without our knowing.
That we dreamed of this event, that everyone without exception dreamed of it, because no one can fail to dream of the destruction of any power become so hegemonic - that is unacceptable for the Western moral conscience. And yet it's a fact, which can be measured by the pathetic violence of all the discourses that want to cover it up.
To put it in the most extreme terms, they did it, but we wanted it. If that's not taken into account, the event loses all its symbolic dimension, it's a pure accident, a purely arbitrary act, the deadly phantasmagoria of a few fanatics, who can then just be eliminated. But we all know that's not the way it is. Hence the delirous counter-phobia of the exorcism of evil: it's because the evil is there, everywhere, like an obscure object of desire. Without this deep complicity, the event would not have the resonance that it does, and in their symbolic strategy, the terrorists undoubtedly knew they could count on this inadmissible complicity.
It goes way beyond hatred of the dominant world power by the dispossessed and the exploited, those who have ended up on the wrong side of the world order. This satanic desire is in the hearts even of those who share in the profits. The allergy to any definitive order, to any definitive power, is fortunately universal, and the two towers of the World Trade Center, the perfect twins, precisely embodied such a definitive order.
No need for the explanations of a death drive or destructive impulse, nor even for an effect of perversity. It is logical and inexorable that the rise of power to the heights of power exacerbates the will to destroy it. And that power is complicit with its own destruction. When the two towers fell, you had the feeling that they were answering the suicide of the suicide-planes with their own suicide....
...In a sense, it is the entire system whose internal fragility lends a hand to the initial action. The more the system concetrates on a world scale, finally constituting a single network, the more it becomes vulnerable at a single point (already a single little Philippino hacker had succeeded, from the depths of his PC, in launching the I Love You virus that circled the world, devastating entire networks). Here, eighteen kamikazees, with the absolute weapon of death multiplied by technological effectiveness, have triggered off a process of global catastrophe.
When the situation is so monopolised by the world power, when you're dealing with this formidable condensation of all the functions of technocratic machinery and one-way thinking, what other path remains open but a terrorist transfer of the situation? The system itself created the objective conditions of this brutal turnabout. By putting all the cards in its own hand, it forces the Other to change the rules of the game. And the new rules are savage, because the stakes are savage. To answer a system whose very excess of power raises an insoluble challenge, the terrorists produce a definitive act whose exchange is also impossible. Terrorism is the act that restores an irreducible singularity at the heart of a system of generalized exchange. All the singularities (the species, the individuals, the cultures) that have paid with their death for the installation of a world circulation are taking revenge today through this terrorist transfer of the situation.
....The fundamental event is that the terrorists have ceased to commit suicide at a total loss, that they now bring their own death into play in an effective, offensive way, according to a strategic intuition which is simply that of the immense fragility of the adversary, that of a system which has reached near-perfection, and is therefore vulnerable to the slightest spark. They have succeeded in making their own deaths into an absolute weapon against a system that lives on the exclusion of death, whose ideal is that of zero casualties. Every system of zero casualties is a zero-sum game. And all the means of dissuasion and destruction can do nothing against an enemy who has already made his death into a counter-offensive weapon: 'What difference do the American bombings make! Our men have just as much desire to die as the Americans to live!' Hence the non-equivalence of 7,000 deaths inflicted in a single blow to a zero-casualty system.
...Suicidal terrorism was a terrorism of the poor, this is a terrorism of the rich. And that's what makes us so afraid: that they have become rich (that have all the resources of wealth), without ceasing to want to do us in. Of course, according to our value system, they're cheating: bringing your own death into play is not in the rules. But they don't care, and the new rules of the games are no longer ours.
... Everything is in the challenge and the duel, in a dual, personal relation with the adverse power. It is what has humiliated you, it is what must be humiliated. And not simply exterminated. You have to make it lose face. And you never achieve that by pure force and the elimination of the other. He must be targeted and wounded amidst adversity. Beyond the pact that links the terrorists with each other, there is something like a dual pact with the adversary. So it's exactly the contrary of the cowardice they are accused of, and it's exactly the contrary of what the Americans did in the Gulf War, for example (and what they're doing again in Afghanistan): invisible target, operational liquidation.
...The collapse of the World Trade Center is unimaginable, but that doesn't suffice to make it a real event. A surplus of violence does not suffice to open up reality. Because reality is a principle, and that principle is what's lost. Reality and fiction are inextricable, and the fascination of the attack is first that of the image (the jubilatory and catastrophic consequences are themselves largely imaginary).
In this case, then, the real is added to the image as a plus of terror, as an extra frisson. Not only is it terrifying, but what's more, it's real.... So this terrorist violence is not a return of reality's flame, nor of history's. This terrorist violence is not 'real.' It's worse, in a sense: it's symbolic. Violence in itself can be banal and inoffensive. Only symbolic violence generates singularity. And in this singular event, in this Manhattan disaster film, the two elements of twentieth-century mass fascination meet: the white magic of cinema and the black magic of terrorism. The white light of cinema, and the black light of terrorism.
...There's no solution to this extreme situation, above all not war, which only offers a situation of dij`-vu, with the same deluge of military forces, phantom information, useless pummeling, devious and pathetic discourse, technological deployment and intoxication. In short, like the Gulf war, a non-event, an event that doesn't really take place.
And that's its raison d'etre: replacing a true and formidable, unique and unpredictable event, with a repetitive, deja-vu pseudo-event. The terrorist attack was a precession of the event over all the modes of interpretation, whereas this stupidly military war is, inversely, a precession of the model over the event, a fake wager that doesn't take place. War as the continuation of the absence of politics by other means.'
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Event world, us, of had died of it of Diana to World of football or the events violent one and realities, of wars in génocides. But of event symbolic system of world scale, i.e. not only of world diffusion, but which puts in failure universalization itself, any. Throughout this stagnation of the years 1990, it was the 'strike of the events' (according to the word of the Argentinian writer Macedonio Fernandez). Eh well, the strike is finished. The events ceased striking. We have even business, with the attacks of New York and of World Trade Center, with the absolute event, the 'mother' of the events, with the pure event which concentrates in him all the events which never took place.
All the play of the history and the power is upset by it, but also the conditions of the analysis. Its time should be taken. Because as long as the events stagnated, it was necessary to anticipate and go more quickly than them. When they accelerate at this point, it is necessary to go more slowly. Without however letting itself bury under will fatras speech and the cloud of intact war, and while keeping the unforgettable fulgurance images.
All the speeches and the comments even betray a gigantic abréaction with the event and the fascination which it exerts. The moral judgment, the union crowned against terrorism are with the measurement of the extraordinary jubilation to see destroying this world super power, better, to some extent to see it destroying itself, to commit suicide in beauty. Because it is it which, from its unbearable power, fomented all this violence infuses all over the world, and thus this terrorist imagination (without the knowledge) which lives us all.
That we dreamed of this event, that everyone without exception dreamed of it, because no one cannot not dream of the destruction of any become power with this point hegemonic, that is unacceptable for the Western moral conscience, but it is however a fact, and who precisely measures himself with the pathetic violence of all the speeches which want to erase it.
With the limit, it is them which did it, but it is us who wanted it. If one does not take account of that, the event loses any dimension symbolic system, it is a pure accident, a purely arbitrary act, the fatal phantasmagoria of some fanatics, that it would then be enough to remove. However we know well that it is not thus. From there all is delirious it against-phobic of exorcism of the evil: it is that it is there, everywhere, a such obscure object of desire. Without this major complicity, the event would not have the repercussion which it had, and in their strategy symbolic system, the terrorists undoubtedly know that they can count on this unavowable complicity.
That exceeds by far the hatred of the dominant world power at disinherited and exploited, to those which fell on the bad side of the world order. This malignant desire is with ON same among those which share the benefit of them. The allergy to any final order, with any final power is fortunately universal, and the two turns of World Trade Center incarnaient perfectly, in their gemellity precisely, this final order.
Not need for a death instinct or of destruction, nor even of perverse effect. It is very logically, and unrelentingly, that the rise to power of the power exacerbates the will to destroy it. And it is accessory to its own destruction. When the two turns broke down, one had the impression that they answered the suicide of the suicide planes by their own suicide. One said: 'God even cannot declare the war.' Eh well if. The Occident, in position of God (of divine absolute power and absolute moral legitimacy) becomes suicidal and declares the war with itself.
The innumerable film-catastrophes testify to this phantasm, that they entreat obviously by the image by drowning all that under the special effects. But the gravitation that they exert, with equal pornography, shows that the passage to the act is always close inclination to denial of any system being all the more strong as it approaches the perfection or the absolute power.
It is probable besides that terrorists (not more than the experts!) had not envisaged the collapse of Twin Towers, which was, much more than the Pentagon, the shock symbolic system most extremely. Collapse symbolic system of a whole system was done by an unforeseeable complicity, like if, while breaking down themselves, while committing suicide, the turns had entered the play to complete the event.
In a direction, it is the whole system which, by its internal brittleness, lends hand-strong to the initial action. More the system concentrates universally, constituting in extreme cases one network, more it becomes vulnerable in one point (already only one small hacker Filipino had succeeded, of the bottom of its portable computer, with launching virus I coils you, which had made the turn of the world by devastating whole networks). Here, they are eighteen kamikazes who, thanks to the absolute weapon of the death, multiplied by technological efficiency, start a total catastrophic process.
When the situation is thus monopolized by the world power, when one deals with this formidable condensation of all the functions by the technocratic machinery and the single thought, which other way is there that a terrorist transfer situation? It is the system itself which created the objective conditions of this brutal retortion. By collecting for him all the charts, it forces the Other to change the rules of the game. And the new rules are wild, because the stake is wild. With a system whose excess of power even poses an insoluble challenge, the terrorists answer by a final act whose exchange also is impossible for him. Terrorism is the act which restores an irreducible singularity with ON system of generalized exchange. All the singularities (the species, individuals, cultures) which paid of their death the installation of a world circulation governed by only one power are avenged today by this terrorist transfer for situation.
Terror counters terror it does not have there more ideology behind all that. One is from now on far beyond the ideology and of the policy. The energy which feeds terror, no ideology, no cause, not even Islamic, can give an account of it. That does not aim even any more at transforming the world, that aims (like the heresies in their time) at radicalizing it by the sacrifice, whereas the system aims at carrying it out by the force.
Terrorism, like the viruses, is everywhere. There is a world perfusion of the terrorism, which is like the solid drop shadow of any system of domination, loan to be awaked everywhere like a double agent. There is no more line of demarcation which makes it possible to encircle it, it is with ON same of this culture which fights it, and the visible fracture (and hatred) which opposes world-wide exploited and underdeveloped in the Western world secretly joined the internal fracture with the system dominating. This one can make face with any visible antagonism. But the other, of viral structure like if any apparatus of domination secrete its antidispositif, its own leaven of disappearance , against this form of almost automatic reversion of its own power, the system cannot anything. And terrorism is the shock wave of this quiet reversion.
It is thus not a shock of civilizations nor of religions, and that exceeds by far Islam and America, on which one tries to focus the conflict to give oneself the illusion of a visible confrontation and a solution of force. It is indeed a fundamental antagonism, but which indicates, through the spectrum of America (which is perhaps the epicentre, but at all the incarnation of universalization to it only) and through the spectrum of the Islam (which either is not to him the incarnation of terrorism), universalization triumphing with the catches with itself. In this direction, one can speak well about a world war, not the third, but the fourth and only the truly world one, since it has as a stake universalization itself. The two First World Wars answered the traditional image of the war. First put an end to the supremacy of Europe and the colonial era. Second put an end to the Nazism. The third, which took place well, in the form of cold war and of dissuasion, put an end to Communism. One with the other, one went each time further towards a single world order. Today this one, virtually arrived in its term, is with the catches with the antagonistic forces everywhere diffuse with ON same of world, in all the current convulsions. War fractale of all the cells, of all the singularities which revolt in the form of antibody. So imperceptible confrontation that should from time to time be saved the idea of the war by spectacular settings in scene, such as those of the Gulf or today that of Afghanistan. But the fourth world war is elsewhere. It is what haunts any world order, any hegemonic domination if Islam dominated the world, terrorism would rise against Islam. Because it is the world itself which resists universalization
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