Illusionists
"By a sort-of magical normative transubstantiation, the fact that armed aggression has succeded, setting in place the military occupation, produces an immediate amnesty of the 'supreme crime' itself and legitimates it's outcome."
Danilo Zolo
The obvious point he makes is that the victors write the history and therefore establish the dominant narrative. No big secret. What is more interesting is this description of hegemonic production as "magical", or somehow defying a rational explanation. I would submit that "normative substantiation" is just what Debord was getting at with his exploration of the Spectacle. It is a lot of syllables but look at it closely: 1: to change into another substance; transmute 2: the change in the eucharistic elements at their consecration in the mass from the substance of bread and wine to the substance of the body of Christ.
"22 The fact that the practical power of modern society has detached itself from itself and established itself in the spectacle as an independent realm can only be explained by the self-cleavage and self-contradictoriness already present in that powerful practice." Guy Debord
Far from being "magical" (or mystical, sacred) , this process is directly explainable through an analysis of power relations and the devices and processes used to separate people from both truth and reality. In their stead modern society is shown the image, the illusion, which they have come to fetishize.
"But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence...illusion only is sacred, truth profane."
Fuerbach ( prefacing the first chapter of the Society of the Spectacle)
The task before us is to unpeel the layers and expose the "illusionists" who have up to now been so successful in separating men from their power and alienating men from themselves. Draw back the curtain and the Great Oz is a sniveling salesman, bread is just bread, wine just wine. Coke will stop being "the real thing" and our labor will stop being "good for the team".
posted by troutsky @ 11:34 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
There is little in the way of illusion here. Debord was himself a creator of spectacles, but he used over the top intellectual language. Isn't that what everyone likes about him? The awesome feeling that you get that you really UNDERSTAND something when you roll his impenetrable phrases off your tongue?
Didn't some Brecht character say that "Be happy with what you have," was always the slogan of those who have so unimaginably much more than you?
I don't think "the cause" is served by dressing it up in fancy academic language. The power elite want what they have and more. They will lie to get or keep it. They'd rather not call a spade a spade because those without power might get angry, and there are so many more of them. Everyone uses euphemisms sometime.
You don't even need Marx to get the gist of it, do you? There were plenty of peasant revolts before he was around - they knew the score. They just lacked the means to take over.
Capitalism contains the seeds for its own destruction.
Lichanos, while I agree the language can be a bit obtuse there is a depth to his inquiry that I find unique. If the problem and solution were as neat as you portray there would have been upheaval long ago. Debord asks the question: why don't people realize their own self interest? It is much more than a "lie" well told.
I naturally agree with Ren (and Karl) or I wouldn't work so hard at this project.
If the problem and solution were as neat as you portray there would have been upheaval long ago.
Why? Maybe the ruled understand the deck is stacked against them and that even if they rebel successfully, the aftermath might not be so pretty...I don't think the "common man" is so brainwashed or deceived.
Sure, if you talk to a person who doesn't spend a lot of time analyzing history and politics - no matter whether they are educated with a Ph. D. or MBA or whether they are flipping burgers: they key is do they spend time thinking about these things - you will find all sorts of ideas that don't make sense and that are contradictory. Not everyone cares about this set of ideas as much as you or I do. But underneath that layer of "confusion", you will often uncover a clear-eyed sense of what's what. Maybe even a healthy cynicism.
Pascal wrote a lot about this a lot - the gap between the philosophers and the crowd.
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