Paper, stone, scissors: from dialectical simulacra to reification of subjectivity
lecture-performance / lecture: Denis Maksimov / performance “Bird, stone, water” : Adrijana Gvozdenovic, costumes by Aurora Zachayuss / FAAP residency, open studio day, April 2016, Sao Paulo
The original ideas and dialectical method of thinking in politics, culture and social existence remains central in the societies. Some of them lived through political experiments, which we aimed on the materialization of the idea of the society a posteriori the period of class struggle. Communist and socialist regimes of the Eastern Europe possess bitter memory of failed attempts to imagine the society after overcoming the dialectics of master and slave. The scattered societies of former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia are prime examples of this kind of failure. South America hasn’t experienced a bitter taste of false hopes for conceptual alternative to meta-ideology of market capitalism and institutionalized political and material inequality. The ideas and potentiality of fundamental change, disruption and tectonic shift from the currents of ‘everlasting present’ within the paradigm of liberal democracy and market capitalism are therefore strong.
In both cases meta-ideology of contemporary capitalistic form of structuring the society politically, economically and culturally are prevailing.
Representational democracy holds the status of the ideal and fair political order for redistribution of power.
Global market capitalism defines individual values, private property and material resources distribution, makes rich richer and thanks to technological progress soon almost immortal, while poor are increasing in proportional number.
Cultural industry embeds legitimacy of the order by creating complex intertwined multiplicity of simulacra for satisfaction of needs and demands for fairer alternative; turning as well art into the instrument of delusion and alienation.
All three are creepily widening the gap of inequality therefore continuously fertilizing the soil of potential for paradigmatic collapse of legitimacy of the whole system. It holds on fear of unknown complexity: if the system is indeed to collapse momentarily, the logical assumption of the consequences is to presume our return into the new Dark Ages. This institutionalized by cultural industry fear is increasing survivability of rotten, obviously unfair and ineffective system of operation of political, economic and cultural production.
The current meta-ideological order strive to mask itself as the final and the eternally better model of societal organization and above-mentioned weight of political history aids it in this task of presenting itself to increasing frustrated members of the society. Demystification of its status therefore is an urgent task for activation of the discussion about reification of fairer alternative. Instead of self-supporting structure of imaginary dialectics of contemporary capitalism, where representational democracy, global neoliberal capitalism and cultural industry work hand-in-hand, realization of all of them in group as one ‘thesis’ should trigger and accelerate formation of anti-thesis, that might provide the necessary synthesis for fairer form of the future. That is the loud moment that is necessary for attempting to escape the looping circles of dialectical thinking.
I are, (s)he am, they is.
The gaze of the Other is always evil, as it inexplicably defines the subject of observation and therefore limits the freedom of our self-identification. Reification of subjectivity in social, political and cultural life means escaping from the position of searching finite dictations of meanings from the position of power. Fluidity and dynamics of self and other identification neutralizes possibility to mask individual desire to dominate behind public interests.
How do we get there? Starting from abandoning the language of ‘normal’ in relation to social life, ‘absolute’ in relation to political order and ‘superior’ in addressing the culture is a major step. Naming is the ultimate power: freeing the discourse from the act of ultimate definition conceptually is an example of how critical theory looks like in action. There is nothing beyond language: as soon as it defined by closed structures, dialectical forms such as man/woman, democracy/dictatorship, high culture/barbarity, which construct the backbone of how the mapping of visible is constructed, the reification of post-dialectical thinking is blocked.