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THE ASSOCIATION FOR ONTOLOGICAL ANARCHY gathers
in conclave, black turbans & shimmering robes, sprawled on shirazi
carpets sipping bitter coffee, smoking long chibouk & sibsi.
QUESTION: What's our position on all these recent defections &
desertions from anarchism (esp. in California-Land): condemn or
condone? Purge them or hail them as advance- guard? Gnostic elite...or
traitors?
Actually, we have a lot of sympathy for the deserters
& their various critiques of anarchISM. Like Sinbad & the
Horrible Old Man, anarchism staggers around with the corpse of a
Martyr magically stuck to its shoulders--haunted by the legacy of
failure & revolutionary masochism--stagnant backwater of lost
history.
Between tragic Past & impossible Future, anarchism
seems to lack a Present--as if afraid to ask itself, here &
now, WHAT ARE MY TRUE DESIRES?--& what can I DO before it's
too late?...Yes, imagine yourself confronted by a sorcerer
who stares you down balefully & demands, "What is your True
Desire?" Do you hem & haw, stammer, take refuge in ideological
platitudes? Do you possess both Imagination & Will, can you
both dream & dare--or are you the dupe of an impotent fantasy?
Look in the mirror & try it...(for one of your
masks is the face of a sorcerer)...
The anarchist "movement" today contains virtually
no Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans or children...even tho in
theory such genuinely oppressed groups stand to gain the most
from any anti-authoritarian revolt. Might it be that anarchISM offers
no concrete program whereby the truly deprived might fulfill (or
at least struggle realistically to fulfill) real needs & desires?
If so, then this failure would explain not only
anarchism's lack of appeal to the poor & marginal, but also
the disaffection & desertions from within its own ranks. Demos,
picket-lines & reprints of 19th century classics don't add up
to a vital, daring conspiracy of self-liberation. If the movement
is to grow rather than shrink, a lot of deadwood will have to be
jettisoned & some risky ideas embraced.
The potential exists. Any day now, vast numbers
of americans are going to realize they're being force-fed a load
of reactionary boring hysterical artificially-flavored crap.
Vast chorus of groans, puking & retching...angry mobs roam the
malls, smashing & looting...etc., etc. The Black Banner could
provide a focus for the outrage & channel it into an insurrection
of the Imagination. We could pick up the struggle where it was dropped
by Situationism in '68 & Autonomia in the seventies, & carry
it to the next stage. We could have revolt in our times--& in
the process, we could realize many of our True Desires, even if
only for a season, a brief Pirate Utopia, a warped free-zone in
the old Space/Time continuum.
If the A.O.A. retains its affiliation with the "movement,"
we do so not merely out of a romantic predilection for lost causes--or
not entirely. Of all "political systems," anarchism (despite its
flaws, & precisely because it is neither political nor a system)
comes closest to our understanding of reality, ontology, the nature
of being. As for the deserters...we agree with their critiques,
but note that they seem to offer no new powerful alternatives. So
for the time being we prefer to concentrate on changing anarchism
from within. Here's our program, comrades:
- Work on the realization that psychic racism
has replaced overt discrimination as one of the most disgusting
aspects of our society. Imaginative participation in other cultures,
esp. those we live with.
- Abandon all ideological purity. Embrace "Type-3"
anarchism (to use Bob Black's pro-tem slogan): neither collectivist
nor individualist. Cleanse the temple of vain idols, get rid of
the Horrible Old Men, the relics & martyrologies.
- Anti-work or "Zerowork" movement extremely important,
including a radical & perhaps violent attack on Education
& the serfdom of children.
- Develop american samizdat network, replace outdated
publishing/propaganda tactics. Pornography & popular entertainment
as vehicles for radical re-education.
- In music the hegemony of the 2/4 & 4/4 beat
must be overthrown. We need a new music, totally insane but life-
affirming, rhythmically subtle yet powerful, & we need it
NOW.
- Anarchism must wean itself away from evangelical
materialism & banal 2-dimensional 19th century scientism.
"Higher states of consciousness" are not mere SPOOKS invented
by evil priests. The orient, the occult, the tribal cultures possess
techniques which can be "appropriated" in true anarchist
fashion. Without "higher states of consciousness," anarchism ends
& dries itself up into a form of misery, a whining complaint.
We need a practical kind of "mystical anarchism," devoid of all
New Age shit-&-shinola, & inexorably heretical & anti-clerical;
avid for all new technologies of consciousness & metanoia--a
democratization of shamanism, intoxicated & serene.
- Sexuality is under assault, obviously from the
Right, more subtly from the avant-pseud "post-sexuality" movement,
& even more subtly by Spectacular Recuperation in media &
advertising. Time for a major step forward in SexPol awareness,
an explosive reaffirmation of the polymorphic eros--(even &
especially in the face of plague & gloom)--a literal glorification
of the senses, a doctrine of delight. Abandon all world-hatred
& shame.
- Experiment with new tactics to replace the outdated
baggage of Leftism. Emphasize practical, material & personal
benefits of radical networking. The times do not appear propitious
for violence or militancy, but surely a bit of sabotage &
imaginative disruption is never out of place. Plot & conspire,
don't bitch & moan. The Art World in particular deserves a
dose of "Poetic Terrorism."
- The despatialization of post-Industrial society
provides some benefits (e.g. computer networking) but can also
manifest as a form of oppression (homelessness, gentrification,
architectural depersonalization, the erasure of Nature, etc.)
The communes of the sixties tried to circumvent these forces but
failed. The question of land refuses to go away. How
can we separate the concept of space from the mechanisms
of control? The territorial gangsters, the Nation/States,
have hogged the entire map. Who can invent for us a cartography
of autonomy, who can draw a map that includes our desires?
AnarchISM ultimately implies anarchy--& anarchy
is chaos. Chaos is the principle of continual creation...& Chaos
never died.
--A.O.A. Plenary Session
March '87, NYC
IN SLEEP WE DREAM of only two forms of government--anarchy
& monarchy. Primordial root consciousness understands no politics
& never plays fair. A democratic dream? a socialist dream? Impossible.
Whether my REMs bring verdical near-prophetic visions
or mere Viennese wish-fulfillment, only kings & wild people
populate my night. Monads & nomads.
Pallid day (when nothing shines by its own light)
slinks & insinuates & suggests that we compromise with a
sad & lackluster reality. But in dream we are never ruled except
by love or sorcery, which are the skills of chaotes & sultans.
Among a people who cannot create or play, but can
only work, artists also know no choice but anarchy &
monarchy. Like the dreamer, they must possess & do
possess their own perceptions, & for this they must sacrifice
the merely social to a "tyrannical Muse." Art dies when treated
"fairly." It must enjoy a caveman's wildness or else have its mouth
filled with gold by some prince. Bureaucrats & sales personnel
poison it, professors chew it up, & philosophers spit it out.
Art is a kind of byzantine barbarity fit only for nobles & heathens.
If you had known the sweetness of life as a poet in the reign of
some venal, corrupt, decadent, ineffective & ridiculous Pasha
or Emir, some Qajar shah, some King Farouk, some Queen of Persia,
you would know that this is what every anarchist must want. How
they loved poems & paintings, those dead luxurious fools, how
they absorbed all roses & cool breezes, tulips & lutes!
Hate their cruelty & caprice, yes--but at least they were human.
The bureaucrats, however, who smear the walls of the mind with odorless
filth--so kind, so gemutlich--who pollute the inner air with
numbness--they're not even worthy of hate. They scarcely exist outside
the bloodless Ideas they serve.
And besides: the dreamer, the artist, the anarchist--do
they not share some tinge of cruel caprice with the most outrageous
of moghuls? Can genuine life occur without some folly, some excess,
some bouts of Heraclitan "strife"? We do not rule--but we cannot
& will not be ruled.
In Russia the Narodnik-Anarchists would sometimes
forge a ukase or manifesto in the name of the Czar; in it
the Autocrat would complain that greedy lords & unfeeling officials
had sealed him in his palace & cut him off from his beloved
people. He would proclaim the end of serfdom & call on peasants
& workers to rise in His Name against the government.
Several times this ploy actually succeeded in sparking
revolts. Why? Because the single absolute ruler acts metaphorically
as a mirror for the unique and utter absoluteness of the self. Each
peasant looked into this glassy legend & beheld his or her own
freedom--an illusion, but one that borrowed its magic from the logic
of the dream.
A similar myth must have inspired the 17th century
Ranters & Antinomians & Fifth Monarchy Men who flocked to
the Jacobite standard with its erudite cabals & bloodproud conspiracies.
The radical mystics were betrayed first by Cromwell & then by
the Restoration--why not, finally, join with flippant cavaliers
& foppish counts, with Rosicrucians & Scottish Rite Masons,
to place an occult messiah on Albion's throne?
Among a people who cannot conceive human society
without a monarch, the desires of radicals may be expressed in monarchical
terms. Among a people who cannot conceive human existence without
a religion, radical desires may speak the language of heresy.
Taoism rejected the whole of Confucian bureaucracy
but retained the image of the Emperor-Sage, who would sit silent
on his throne facing a propitious direction, doing absolutely nothing.
In Islam the Ismailis took the idea of the Imam of the Prophet's
Household & metamorphosed it into the Imam-of- one's-own-being,
the perfected self who is beyond all Law & rule, who is atoned
with the One. And this doctrine led them into revolt against Islam,
to terror & assassination in the name of pure esoteric self-liberation
& total realization.
Classical 19th century anarchism defined itself
in the struggle against crown & church, & therefore on the
waking level it considered itself egalitarian & atheist. This
rhetoric however obscures what really happens: the "king" becomes
the "anarchist," the "priest" a "heretic." In this strange duet
of mutability the politician, the democrat, the socialist, the rational
ideologue can find no place; they are deaf to the music & lack
all sense of rhythm. Terrorist & monarch are archetypes;
these others are mere functionaries.
Once anarch & king clutched each other's throats
& waltzed a totentanz--a splendid battle. Now, however, both
are relegated to history's trashbin--has-beens, curiosities of a
leisurely & more cultivated past. They whirl around so fast
that they seem to meld together...can they somehow have become one
thing, a Siamese twin, a Janus, a freakish unity? "The sleep of
Reason..." ah! most desirable & desirous monsters!
Ontological Anarchy proclaims flatly, bluntly, &
almost brainlessly: yes, the two are now one. As a single entity
the anarch/king now is reborn; each of us the ruler of our own flesh,
our own creations--and as much of everything else as we can grab
& hold.
Our actions are justified by fiat & our relations
are shaped by treaties with other autarchs. We make the law for
our own domains--& the chains of the law have been broken. At
present perhaps we survive as mere Pretenders--but even so we may
seize a few instants, a few square feet of reality over which to
impose our absolute will, our royaume. L'etat, c'est moi.
If we are bound by any ethic or morality it must
be one which we ourselves have imagined, fabulously more exalted
& more liberating than the "moralic acid" of puritans &
humanists. "Ye are as gods"--"Thou art That."
The words monarchism & mysticism
are used here in part simply pour epater those egalito-atheist
anarchists who react with pious horror to any mention of pomp or
superstition-mongering. No champagne revolutions for them!
Our brand of anti-authoritarianism, however, thrives
on baroque paradox; it favors states of consciousness, emotion &
aesthetics over all petrified ideologies & dogma; it embraces
multitudes & relishes contradictions. Ontological Anarchy is
a hobgoblin for BIG minds. The translation of the title (& key
term) of Max Stirner's magnum opus as The Ego & Its Own
has led to a subtle misinterpretation of "individualism." The English-Latin
word ego comes freighted & weighed with freudian &
protestant baggage. A careful reading of Stirner suggests that The
Unique & His Own-ness would better reflect his intentions,
given that he never defines the ego in opposition to libido
or id, or in opposition to "soul" or "spirit." The Unique (der
Einzige) might best be construed simply as the individual self.
Stirner commits no metaphysics, yet bestows on the
Unique a certain absoluteness. In what way then does this Einzige
differ from the Self of Advaita Vedanta? Tat tvam asi: Thou
(individual Self) art That (absolute Self).
Many believe that mysticism "dissolves the ego."
Rubbish. Only death does that (or such at least is our Sadducean
assumption). Nor does mysticism destroy the "carnal" or "animal"
self--which would also amount to suicide. What mysticism really
tries to surmount is false consciousness, illusion, Consensus Reality,
& all the failures of self that accompany these ills. True mysticism
creates a "self at peace," a self with power. The highest task of
metaphysics (accomplished for example by Ibn Arabi, Boehme, Ramana
Maharshi) is in a sense to self-destruct, to identify metaphysical
& physical, transcendent & immanent, as ONE. Certain radical
monists have pushed this doctrine far beyond mere pantheism
or religious mysticism. An apprehension of the immanent oneness
of being inspires certain antinomian heresies (the Ranters, the
Assassins) whom we consider our ancestors.
Stirner himself seems deaf to the possible spiritual
resonances of Individualism--& in this he belongs to the 19th
century: born long after the deliquescence of Christendom, but long
before the discovery of the Orient & of the hidden illuminist
tradition in Western alchemy, revolutionary heresy & occult
activism. Stirner quite correctly despised what he knew as "mysticism,"
a mere pietistic sentimentality based on self-abnegation & world
hatred. Nietzsche nailed down the lid on "God" a few years later.
Since then, who has dared to suggest that Individualism & mysticism
might be reconciled & synthesized?
The missing ingredient in Stirner (Nietzsche comes
closer) is a working concept of nonordinary consciousness.
The realization of the unique self (or ubermensch) must reverberate
& expand like waves or spirals or music to embrace direct experience
or intuitive perception of the uniqueness of reality itself. This
realization engulfs & erases all duality, dichotomy, & dialectic.
It carries with itself, like an electric charge, an intense &
wordless sense of value: it "divinizes" the self.
Being/consciousness/bliss (satchitananda)
cannot be dismissed as merely another Stirnerian "spook" or "wheel
in the head." It invokes no exclusively transcendent principle for
which the Einzige must sacrifice his/her own-ness. It simply
states that intense awareness of existence itself results in "bliss"--or
in less loaded language, "valuative consciousness." The goal of
the Unique after all is to possess everything; the radical
monist attains this by identifying self with perception, like the
Chinese inkbrush painter who "becomes the bamboo," so that "it paints
itself."
Despite mysterious hints Stirner drops about a "union
of Unique-ones" & despite Nietzsche's eternal "Yea" & exaltation
of life, their Individualism seems somehow shaped by a certain coldness
toward the other. In part they cultivated a bracing, cleansing
chilliness against the warm suffocation of 19th century sentimentality
& altruism; in part they simply despised what someone (Mencken?)
called "Homo Boobensis."
And yet, reading behind & beneath the layer
of ice, we uncover traces of a fiery doctrine--what Gaston Bachelard
might have called "a Poetics of the Other." The Einzige's
relation with the Other cannot be defined or limited by any institution
or idea. And yet clearly, however paradoxically, the Unique depends
for completeness on the Other, & cannot & will not be realized
in any bitter isolation.
The examples of "wolf children" or enfants sauvages
suggest that a human infant deprived of human company for too long
will never attain conscious humanity--will never acquire language.
The Wild Child perhaps provides a poetic metaphor for the Unique-one--and
yet simultaneously marks the precise point where Unique & Other
must meet, coalesce, unify--or else fail to attain & possess
all of which they are capable.
The Other mirrors the Self--the Other is our witness.
The Other completes the Self--the Other gives us the key to the
perception of oneness-of-being. When we speak of being & consciousness,
we point to the Self; when we speak of bliss we implicate the Other.
The acquisition of language falls under the sign
of Eros-- all communication is essentially erotic, all relations
are erotic. Avicenna & Dante claimed that love moves the very
stars & planets in their courses--the Rg Veda &
Hesiod's Theogony both proclaim Love the first god
born after Chaos. Affections, affinities, aesthetic perceptions,
beautiful creations, conviviality--all the most precious possessions
of the Unique-one arise from the conjunction of Self & Other
in the constellation of Desire.
Here again the project begun by Individualism can
be evolved & revivified by a graft with mysticism--specifically
with tantra. As an esoteric technique divorced from orthodox
Hinduism, tantra provides a symbolic framework ("Net of Jewels")
for the identification of sexual pleasure & non- ordinary consciousness.
All antinomian sects have contained some "tantrik" aspect, from
the families of Love & Free Brethren & Adamites of Europe
to the pederast sufis of Persia to the Taoist alchemists of China.
Even classical anarchism has enjoyed its tantrik moments: Fourier's
Phalansteries; the "Mystical Anarchism" of G. Ivanov & other
fin-de-siÉcle Russian symbolists; the incestuous erotism of Arzibashaev's
Sanine; the weird combination of Nihilism & Kali-worship
which inspired the Bengali Terrorist Party (to which my tantrik
guru Sri Kamanaransan Biswas had the honor of belonging)...
We, however, propose a much deeper syncretism of
anarchy & tantra than any of these. In fact, we simply suggest
that Individual Anarchism & Radical Monism are to be considered
henceforth one and the same movement.
This hybrid has been called "spiritual materialism,"
a term which burns up all metaphysics in the fire of oneness of
spirit & matter. We also like "Ontological Anarchy" because
it suggests that being itself remains in a state of "divine Chaos,"
of all-potentiality, of continual creation.
In this flux only the jiva mukti, or "liberated
individual," is self-realized, and thus monarch or owner of his
perceptions and relations. In this ceaseless flow only desire offers
any principle of order, and thus the only possible society (as Fourier
understood) is that of lovers.
Anarchism is dead, long live anarchy! We no longer
need the baggage of revolutionary masochism or idealist self- sacrifice--or
the frigidity of Individualism with its disdain for conviviality,
of living together--or the vulgar superstitions of 19th
century atheism, scientism, and progressism. All that dead weight!
Frowsy proletarian suitcases, heavy bourgeois steamer-trunks, boring
philosophical portmanteaux--over the side with them!
We want from these systems only their vitality,
their life- forces, daring, intransigence, anger, heedlessness--their
power, their shakti. Before we jettison the rubbish and the
carpetbags, we'll rifle the luggage for billfolds, revolvers, jewels,
drugs and other useful items--keep what we like and trash the rest.
Why not? Are we priests of a cult, to croon over relics and mumble
our martyrologies?
Monarchism too has something we want--a grace, an
ease, a pride, a superabundance. We'll take these, and dump the
woes of authority & torture in history's garbage bin. Mysticism
has something we need--"self-overcoming," exalted awareness, reservoirs
of psychic potency. These we will expropriate in the name of our
insurrection--and leave the woes of morality & religion to rot
& decompose.
As the Ranters used to say when greeting any "fellow
creature"--from king to cut-purse--"Rejoice! All is ours!"
THE KALI YUGA STILL has 200,000 or so years to play--good
news for advocates & avatars of CHAOS, bad news for Brahmins,
Yahwists, bureaucrat-gods & their runningdogs.
I knew Darjeeling hid something for me soon as I
heard the name--dorje ling--Thunderbolt City. In 1969 I arrived
just before the monsoons. Old British hill station, summer hdqrs
for Govt. of Bengal--streets in the form of winding wood staircases,
the Mall with a View of Sikkim & Mt Katchenhunga- -Tibetan temples
& refugees--beautiful yellow-porcelain people called Lepchas
(the real abo's)--Hindus, Moslems, Nepalese & Bhutanese Buddhists,
& decaying Brits who lost their way home in '47, still running
musty banks & tea- shoppes.
Met Ganesh Baba, fat white-bearded saddhu with overly-
impeccable Oxford accent--never saw anyone smoke so much ganja,
chillam after chillam full, then we'd wander the streets while he
played ball with shrieking kids or picked fights in the bazaar,
chasing after terrified clerks with his umbrella, then roaring with
laughter.
He introduced me to Sri Kamanaransan Biswas, a tiny
wispy middleage Bengali government clerk in a shabby suit, who offered
to teach me Tantra. Mr Biswas lived in a tiny bungalow perched on
a steep pine-tree misty hillside, where I visited him daily with
pints of cheap brandy for puja & tippling--he encouraged me
to smoke while we talked, since ganja too is sacred to Kali.
Mr Biswas in his wild youth was a member of the
Bengali Terrorist Party, which included both Kali worshippers &
heretic Moslem mystics as well as anarchists & extreme leftists.
Ganesh Baba seemed to approve of this secret past, as if it were
a sign of Mr Biswas's hidden tantrika strength, despite his outward
seedy mild appearance.
We discussed my readings in Sir John Woodruffe ("Arthur
Avalon") each afternoon, I walked there thru cold summer fogs, Tibetan
spirit-traps flapping in the soaked breeze loomed out of the mist
& cedars. We practiced the Tara- mantra and Tara-mudra (or Yoni-mudra),
and studied the Tara- yantra diagram for magical purposes. Once
we visited a temple to the Hindu Mars (like ours, both planet &
war-god) where he bought a finger-ring made from an iron horseshoe
nail & gave it to me. More brandy & ganja.
Tara: one of the forms of Kali, very similar in
attributes: dwarfish, naked, four-armed with weapons, dancing on
dead Shiva, necklace of skulls or severed heads, tongue dripping
blood, skin a deep blue-grey the precise color of monsoon clouds.
Every day more rain--mud-slides blocking roads. My Border Area Permit
expires. Mr Biswas & I descend the slick wet Himalayas by jeep
& train down to his ancestral city, Siliguri in the flat Bengali
plains where the Ganges fingers into a sodden viridescent delta.
We visit his wife in the hospital. Last year a flood
drowned Siliguri killing tens of thousands. Cholera broke out, the
city's a wreck, algae-stained & ruined, the hospital's halls
still caked with slime, blood, vomit, the liquids of death. She
sits silent on her bed glaring unblinking at hideous fates. Dark
side of the goddess. He gives me a colored lithograph of Tara which
miraculously floated above the water & was saved.
That night we attend some ceremony at the local
Kali-temple, a modest half-ruined little roadside shrine--torchlight
the only illumination--chanting & drums with strange, almost
African syncopation, totally unclassical, primordial & yet insanely
complex. We drink, we smoke. Alone in the cemetery, next to a half-burnt
corpse, I'm initiated into Tara Tantra. Next day, feverish &
spaced-out, I say farewell & set out for Assam, to the great
temple of Shakti's yoni in Gauhati, just in time for the
annual festival. Assam is forbidden territory & I have no permit.
Midnight in Gauhati I sneak off the train, back down the tracks
thru rain & mud up to my knees & total darkness, blunder
at last into the city & find a bug-ridden hotel. Sick as a dog
by this time. No sleep.
In the morning, bus up to the temple on a nearby
mountain. Huge towers, pullulating deities, courtyards, outbuildings--
hundreds of thousands of pilgrims--weird saddhus down from their
ice-caves squatting on tiger skins & chanting. Sheep & doves
are being slaughtered by the thousands, a real hecatomb--(not another
white sahib in sight)--gutters running inch-deep in blood--curve-bladed
Kali-swords chop chop chop, dead heads plocking onto the slippery
cobblestones.
When Shiva chopped Shakti into 53 pieces & scattered
them over the whole Ganges basin, her cunt fell here. Some friendly
priests speak English & help me find the cave where Yoni's on
display. By this time I know I'm seriously sick, but determined
to finish the ritual. A herd of pilgrims (all at least one head
shorter than me) literally engulfs me like an undertow-wave at the
beach, & hurls me suspended down suffocating winding troglodyte
stairs into claustrophobic womb-cave where I swirl nauseated &
hallucinating toward a shapeless cone meteorite smeared in centuries
of ghee & ochre. The herd parts for me, allows me to throw a
garland of jasmine over the yoni.
A week later in Kathmandu I enter the German Missionary
Hospital (for a month) with hepatitis. A small price to pay for
all that knowledge--the liver of some retired colonel from a Kipling
story!--but I know her, I know Kali. Yes absolutely the
archetype of all that horror, yet for those who know, she becomes
the generous mother. Later in a cave in the jungle above Rishikish
I meditated on Tara for several days (with mantra, yantra, mudra,
incense, & flowers) & returned to the serenity of Darjeeling,
its beneficent visions.
Her age must contain horrors, for most of us cannot
understand her or reach beyond the necklace of skulls to the garland
of jasmine, knowing in what sense they are the same. To
go thru CHAOS, to ride it like a tiger, to embrace it (even sexually)
& absorb some of its shakti, its life-juice--this is the Path
of Kali Yuga. Creative nihilism. For those who follow it she promises
enlightenment & even wealth, a share of her temporal power.
The sexuality & violence serve as metaphors
in a poem which acts directly on consciousness through the Image-ination--or
else in the correct circumstances they can be openly deployed &
enjoyed, embued with a sense of the holiness of every thing
from ecstasy & wine to garbage & corpses.
Those who ignore her or see her outside themselves
risk destruction. Those who worship her as ishta-devata,
or divine self, taste her Age of Iron as if it were gold, knowing
the alchemy of her presence.
ONE OF THE SIGNS of that End Time so many seem to
anticipate would consist of a fascination with all the most negative
& hateful detritus of that Time, a fascination felt by the very
class of thinkers who consider themselves most perspicacious about
the so-called apocalypse they warn us to beware. I'm speaking of
people I know very well--those of the "spiritual right" (such as
the neo-Guenonians with their obsession for signs of decadence)--&
those of the post- philosophical left, the detached essayists of
death, connoisseurs of the arts of mutilation.
For both these sets, all possible action in the
world is smeared out onto one level plain--all become equally meaningless.
For the Traditionalist, nothing matters but to prepare the soul
for death (not only its own but the whole world's as well). For
the "cultural critic" nothing matters but the game of identifying
yet one more reason for despair, analyzing it, adding it to the
catalogue.
Now the End of the World is an abstraction because
it has never happened. It has no existence in the real world. It
will cease to be an abstraction only when it happens--if it happens.
(I do not claim to know "God's mind" on the subject- -nor to possess
any scientific knowledge about a still non- existent future). I
see only a mental image & its emotional ramifications; as such
I identify it as a kind of ghostly virus, a spook-sickness in myself
which ought to be expunged rather than hypochondriacally coddled
& indulged. I have come to despise the "End of the World" as
an ideological icon held over my head by religion, state, &
cultural milieu alike, as a reason for doing nothing.
I understand why the religious & political "powers"
would want to keep me quaking in my shoes. Since only they
offer even a chance of evading ragnarok (thru prayer, thru
democracy, thru communism, etc.), I will sheepishly follow their
dictates & dare nothing on my own. The case of the enlightened
intellectuals, however, seems more puzzling at first. What power
do they derive from this telling-the- beads of fear &
gloom, sadism & hatred?
Essentially they gain smartness. Any attack
on them must appear stupid, since they alone are clear-eyed enough
to recognize the truth, they alone daring enough to show it
forth in defiance of rude shit-kicking censors & liberal
wimps. If I attack them as part of the very problem they claim to
be discussing objectively, I will be seen as a bumpkin, a prude,
a pollyanna. If I admit my hatred for the artifacts of
their perception (books, artworks, performances) then I may be dismissed
as merely squeamish (& so of course psychologically repressed),
or else at the very least lacking in seriousness.
Many people assume that because I sometimes express
myself as an anarchist boy-lover, I must also be "interested" in
other ultra-postmodern ideas like serial child-murder, fascist ideology,
or the photographs of Joel P. Witkin. They assume only two sides
to any issue--the hip side & the unhip side. A marxist who objected
to all this death-cultishness as anti-progressive would be thought
as foolish as a Xtian fundamentalist who believed it immoral.
I maintain that (as usual) many sides exist to this
issue rather than only two. Two-sided issues (creationism vs darwinism,
"choice" vs "pro-life," etc.) are all without exception delusions,
spectacular lies.
My position is this: I am all too well aware of
the "intelligence" which prevents action. I myself possess it in
abundance. Every once in a while however I have managed to behave
as if I were stupid enough to try to change my life. Sometimes I've
used dangerous stupifiants like religion, marijuana, chaos, the
love of boys. On a few occasions I have attained some degree of
success--& I say this not to boast but rather to bear witness.
By overthrowing the inner icons of the End of the World & the
Futility of all mundane endeavor, I have (rarely) broken through
into a state which (by comparison with all I'd known) appeared to
be one of health. The images of death & mutilation
which fascinate our artists & intellectuals appear to me--in
the remembered light of these experiences--tragically inappropriate
to the real potential of existence & of discourse about
existence.
Existence itself may be considered an abyss possessed
of no meaning. I do not read this as a pessimistic statement.
If it be true, then I can see in it nothing else but a declaration
of autonomy for my imagination & will--& for the most beautiful
act they can conceive with which to bestow meaning upon
existence.
Why should I emblemize this freedom with an act
such as murder (as did the existentialists) or with any of the ghoulish
tastes of the eighties? Death can only kill me once- -till then
I am free to express & experience (as much as I can)
a life & an art of life based on self-valuating "peak experiences,"
as well as "conviviality" (which also possesses its own reward).
The obsessive replication of Death-imagery (&
its reproduction or even commodification) gets in the way
of this project just as obstructively as censorship or media- brainwashing.
It sets up negative feedback loops--it is bad juju. It helps no
one conquer fear of death, but merely inculcates a morbid
fear in place of the healthy fear all sentient creatures feel at
the smell of their own mortality.
This is not to absolve the world of its ugliness,
or to deny that truly fearful things exist in it. But some of these
things can be overcome--on the condition that we build an aesthetic
on the overcoming rather than the fear.
I recently attended a gay dance/poetry performance
of uncompromising hipness: the one black dancer in the troupe had
to pretend to fuck a dead sheep.
Part of my self-induced stupidity, I confess, is
to believe (& even feel) that art can change me, & change
others. That's why I write pornography & propaganda--to cause
change. Art can never mean as much as a love affair, perhaps,
or an insurrection. But...to a certain extent...it works.
Even if I'd given up all hope in art, however, all
expectation of exaltation, I would still refuse to put up with art
that merely exacerbates my misery, or indulges in schadenfreude,
"delight in the misery of others." I turn away from certain art
as a dog would turn away howling from the corpse of its companion.
I'd like to renounce the sophistication which would permit me to
sniff it with detached curiosity as yet another example of post-industrial
decomposition.
Only the dead are truly smart, truly cool. Nothing
touches them. While I live, however, I side with bumbling suffering
crooked life, with anger rather than boredom, with sweet lust, hunger
& carelessness...against the icy avant-guard & its fashionable
premonitions of the sepulcher.
(For Harry Smith)
AT THE SURREALIST FILM show, someone asked Stan
Brakhage about the media's use of surrealism (MTV, etc.); he answered
that it was a "damn shame." Well, maybe it is & maybe it isn't
(does popular kultur ipso facto lack all inspiration?)--but
granting that on some level the media's appropriation of surrealism
is a damn shame, are we to believe that there was nothing in surrealism
that allowed this theft to occur?
The return of the repressed means the return of
the paleolithic--not a return to the Old Stone Age, but
a spiralling around on a new level of the gyre. (After all, 99.9999%
of human experience is of hunting/gathering, with agriculture &
industry a mere oil slick on the deep well of non-history.) Paleolithic
equals pre-Work ("original leisure society"). Post-Work (Zerowork)
equals "Psychic Paleolithism."
All projects for the "liberation of desire" (Surrealism)
which remain enmeshed in the matrix of Work can only lead to the
commodification of desire. The Neolithic begins with desire for
commodities (agricultural surplus), moves on to the production of
desire (industry), & ends with the implosion of desire (advertising).
The Surrealist liberation of desire, for all its aesthetic accomplishments,
remains no more than a subset of production--hence the wholesaling
of Surrealism to the Communist Party & its Work-ist ideology
(not to mention attendant misogyny & homophobia). Modern leisure,
in turn, is simply a subset of Work (hence its commodification)--so
it is no accident that when Surrealism closed up shop, the only
customers at the garage sale were ad execs.
Advertising, using Surrealism's colonization of
the unconscious to create desire, leads to the final implosion
of Surrealism. It's not just a "damn shame & a disgrace," not
a simple appropriation. Surrealism was made for advertising,
for commodification. Surrealism is in fact a betrayal of desire.
And yet, out of this abyss of meaning, desire still
rises, innocent as a new-hatched phoenix. Early Berlin dada (which
rejected the return of the art-object) for all its faults provides
a better model for dealing with the implosion of the social than
Surrealism could ever do--an anarchist model, or perhaps (in anthro-jargon)
a non-authoritarian model, a destruction of all ideology, of all
chains of law. As the structure of Work/Leisure crumbles into emptiness,
as all forms of control vanish in the dissolution of meaning, the
Neolithic seems bound to vanish as well, with all its temples &
granaries & police, to be replaced by some return of hunting/gathering
on the psychic level--a re- nomadization. Everything's imploding
& disappearing--the oedipal family, education, even the unconscious
itself (as Andr Codrescu says). Let's not mistake this for
Armageddon (let's resist the seduction of apocalypse, the eschatological
con)--it's not the world coming to an end-- only the empty
husks of the social, catching fire & disappearing.
Surrealism must be junked along with all the other
beautiful bric-a-brac of agricultural priestcraft & vapid control-
systems. No one knows what's coming, what misery, what spirit of
wildness, what joy--but the last thing we need on our voyage is
another set of commissars--popes of our dreams- -daddies. Down with
Surrealism...
--Naropa, July 9, 1988
WE'VE LEARNED TO DISTRUST the verb to be,
the word is--let's say rather: note the striking resemblance
between the concept SATORI & the concept REVOLUTION OF EVERYDAY
LIFE--in both cases: a perception of the "ordinary" with extraordinary
consequences for consciousness & action. We can't use the phrase
"is like" because both concepts (like all concepts, all words for
that matter) come crusted with accretions--each burdened with all
its psycho-cultural baggage, like guests who arrive suspiciously
overly well- supplied for the weekend.
So allow me the old-fashioned Beat-Zennish use of
satori, while simultaneously emphasizing--in the case of
the Situationist slogan--that one of the roots of its dialectic
can be traced to dada & Surrealism's notion of the "marvelous"
erupting from (or into) a life which only seems suffocated
by the banal, by the miseries of abstraction & alienation. I
define my terms by making them more vague, precisely in order to
avoid the orthodoxies of both Buddhism & Situationism, to evade
their ideologico- semantic traps--those broken-down language machines!
Rather, I propose we ravage them for parts, an act of cultural bricolage.
"Revolution" means just another turn of the crank- -while religious
orthodoxy of any sort leads logically to a veritable government
of cranks. Let's not idolize satori by imagining it the monopoly
of mystic monks, or as contingent on any moral code; & rather
than fetishize the Leftism of '68 we prefer Stirner's term "insurrection"
or "uprising," which escapes the built-in implications of a mere
change of authority.
This constellation of concepts involves "breaking
rules" of ordered perception to arrive at direct experiencing, somewhat
analogous to the process whereby chaos spontaneously resolves into
fractal nonlinear orders, or the way in which "wild" creative energy
resolves as play & poesis. "Spontaneous order" out of
"chaos" in turn evokes the anarchist Taoism of the Chuang
Tzu. Zen may be accused of lacking awareness of the "revolutionary"
implications of satori, while the Situationists can be criticized
for ignoring a certain "spirituality" inherent in the self- realization
& conviviality their cause demands. By identifying satori with
the r. of e.d.l. we're performing a bit of a shotgun marriage fully
as remarkable as the Surrealists' famous mating of an umbrella &
sewing machine or whatever it was. Miscegenation. The race-mixing
advocated by Nietzsche, who was attracted, no doubt, by the sexiness
of the half-caste.
I'm tempted to try to describe the way satori "is"
like the r. of e.d.l.--but I can't. Or to put it another way: nearly
all I write revolves around this theme; I would have to repeat nearly
everything in order to elucidate this single point. Instead, as
an appendix, I offer one more curious coincidence or interpenetration
of 2 terms, one from Situationism again & the other this time
from sufism. The drive or "drift" was conceived as an
exercise in deliberate revolutionizing of everyday life--a sort
of aimless wandering thru city streets, a visionary urban nomadism
involving an openness to "culture as nature" (if I grasp the idea
correctly)--which by its sheer duration would inculcate in the drifters
a propensity to experience the marvelous; not always in its beneficent
form perhaps, but hopefully always productive of insight--whether
thru architecture, the erotic, adventure, drink & drugs, danger,
inspiration, whatever--into the intensity of unmediated perception
& experience.
The parallel term in sufism would be "journeying
to the far horizons" or simply "journeying," a spiritual exercise
which combines the urban & nomadic energies of Islam into a
single trajectory, sometimes called "the Caravan of Summer." The
dervish vows to travel at a certain velocity, perhaps spending no
more than 7 nights or 40 nights in one city, accepting whatever
comes, moving wherever signs & coincidences or simply whims
may lead, heading from power- spot to power-spot, conscious of "sacred
geography," of itinerary as meaning, of topology as symbology. Here's
another constellation: Ibn Khaldun, On the Road (both
Jack Kerouac's & Jack London's), the form of the picaresque
novel in general, Baron Munchausen, wanderjahr, Marco Polo,
boys in a suburban summer forest, Arthurian knights out questing
for trouble, queers out cruising for boys, pub-crawling with Melville,
Poe, Baudelaire--or canoeing with Thoreau in Maine...travel as the
antithesis of tourism, space rather than time. Art project:
the construction of a "map" bearing a 1:1 ratio to the "territory"
explored. Political project: the construction of shifting "autonomous
zones" within an invisible nomadic network (like the Rainbow Gatherings).
Spiritual project: the creation or discovery of pilgrimages in which
the concept "shrine" has been replaced (or esotericized) by the
concept "peak experience."
What I'm trying to do here (as usual) is to provide
a sound irrational basis, a strange philosophy if you like, for
what I call the Free Religions, including the Psychedelic &
Discordian currents, non-hierarchical neo-paganism, antinomian heresies,
chaos & Kaos Magik, revolutionary HooDoo, "unchurched" &
anarchist Christians, Magical Judaism, the Moorish Orthodox Church,
Church of the SubGenius, the Faeries, radical Taoists, beer mystics,
people of the Herb, etc., etc.
Contrary to the expectations of 19th century radicals,
religion has not gone away--perhaps we'd be better off if it had--but
has instead increased in power, seemingly in proportion to the global
increase in the realm of technology & rational control. Both
fundamentalism & the New Age derive some force from deep &
widespread dissatisfaction with the System that works against all
perception of the marvelousness of everyday life--call it Babylon
or the Spectacle, Capital or Empire, Society of Simulation or of
soulless mechanism--what you wish. But these two religious forces
divert the very desire for the authentic toward overpowering &
oppressive new abstractions (morality in the case of fundamentalism,
commodification in the case of the New Age), & for this reason
can quite properly be called "reactionary."
Just as cultural radicals will seek to infiltrate
& subvert the popular media, & just as political radicals
will perform similar functions in the spheres of Work, Family, &
other social organizations, so there exists a need for radicals
to penetrate the institution of religion itself rather than merely
continue to mouth 19th century platitudes about atheistic materialism.
It's going to happen anyway--better to approach it with consciousness,
with grace & style.
Having once lived near the Hdqrs of the World Council
of Churches, I like the possibility of a Free Churches parody version--parody
being one of our chief strategies (or call it dtournement
or deconstruction or creative destruction)- -a sort of loose network
(I dislike that word; let's call it a "webwork" instead) of weird
cults & individuals providing conversation & services for
each other, out of which might begin to emerge a trend or tendency
or "current" (in magical terms) strong enough to wreak some psychic
havoc on the Fundies & New Agers, even the ayatollahs &
the Papacy, convivial enough for us to disagree with each other
& yet still give great parties--or conclaves, or ecumenical
councils, or World Congresses--which we anticipate with glee.
The Free Religions may offer some of the only possible
spiritual alternatives to televangelist stormtroopers & pinhead
crystal-channelers (not to mention the established religions), &
will thus become more & more important, more & more vital
in a future where the demand for the eruption of the marvelous into
the ordinary will become the most ringing, poignant & tumultuous
of all political demands--a future which will begin (wait a minute,
lemme check my clock)...7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...NOW.
SUBTERRANEAN REGIONS OF THE continent excavated
in cyclopaean caverns, cathedralspace fractal networks, labyrinthine
gargantuan tunnels, slow black underground rivers, unmoving stygian
lakes, pure & slightly luminiferous, slim waterfalls plunging
down watersmooth rock, cataracting round petrified forests of stalactites
& stalagmites in spelunker-bewildering blind-fish complexity
& unfathomable vastness...Who dug this hollow earth beneath
the ice foreseen by Poe, by certain paranoid German occultists,
Shaverian UFO freaks? Was Earth once colonized in the time of Gondwana
or MU by some Elder Race? their reptilian skeletons still mouldering
in the farthest secret mazes of the cavern system? Sluggish backwaters,
dead-end canals, stagnant pools far from the centers of civilization
like Little America, Transport City, or Nan Chi Han, down in the
dark recesses and boondocks of the Antarctic caves, fungus &
albino fern. We suspect them of mutations, amphibian webbed fingers
and toes, degenerate habits-- Kallikaks of the Hollow Earth, Lovecraftian
renegades, hermits, skulking incestuous smugglers, runaway criminals,
anarchists forced into hiding after the Entropy Wars, fugitives
from Genetic Puritanism, dissident Chinese Tongs & Yellow Turban
fanatics, lascar cave-pirates, pale shiftless whitetrash from the
prolewarrens of the industrial domes along Thwait's Tongue &
the Walgreen Coast & Edsel-Ford-Land- -the Trogs have kept alive
for over 200 years the folk- memory of the Autonomous Zone, the
myth that someday it will appear again...Taoism, libertine philosophy,
Indonesian sorcery, cult of the Cave Mother (or Mothers), identified
by some scholars with the Javanese sea/moon goddess Loro Kidul,
by others with a minor deity of the South Pole Star Sect, the "Jade
Goddess"...manuscripts (written in Bahasa Ingliss the pidgin dialect
of the deep caves) contain mangled quotations from Nietzsche &
Chuang Tzu...Trade consists of occasional precious gems and cultivation
of white poppy, fungus, over a dozen different species of "magic"
mushrooms...Shallow Lake Erebus, 5 miles across, dotted with stalagmitic
islets choked with fern & kudzu & black dwarf pine, held
in a cave so vast it sometimes creates its own weather...The town
belongs officially to Little America but most of the inhabitants
are Trogs living off the Shiftless Dole--& the deep-cave tribal
country lies just across the Lake. Riffraff, artists, drug addicts,
sorcerers, smugglers, remittance-men & perverts live in crumbling
basalt-&- synthplast hotels half-encrusted with pale green vines,
along the lakefront, an avenue of squalid cafes, gem emporia guarded
by armed ninjas, chinese krill-noodle shops, the crystal-tinselled
hall for slow fusion-gamelan dancers, boys practicing their mudras
on sleepy electronic dark blue afternoons to the rippling of synthgongs
and metallophones...& below the pier perhaps a few desultory
bathers along the black beach, genuine low-budget tourists gawking
at the shrine behind the bazaar where pallid old Trog pamongs tranced
out on fungus drool & roll up their eyes, breathe in the fumes
of heavy incense, everything seems suddenly menacingly bright, flickering
with significance...a few cases of webbed fingers but the rumors
of ritual promiscuity are true enough. I was living in a Trog fishing
village across the lake from Erebus in a rented room above the baitshop...rural
sloth & degenerate superstitious rites of sensual abandon, the
larval & unhealthy mysteries of the chthonic mutant downtrodden
Trogs, lazy shiftless no-count hicks...Little America, so christian
& free of mutation, eugenic & orderly, where ev- eryone
lives jacked into the fleshless realm of ancient software &
holography, so euclidean, newtonian, clean & patriotic--L.A.
will never understand this innocent filth- sorcery, this "spiritual
materialism," this slavery to the volcanic desires of secret cave-boy
gangs like laughing flowers jetting with dynamo erections pulsing
up pure life curved taut as bows, & the smell of water, pond-scum,
nightblooming white flowers, jasmine & datura, urine, children's
wet hair, sperm & mud...possessed by cave- spirits, perhaps
ghosts of ancient aliens now wandering as demons seeking to renew
long-lost pleasures of flesh & substance. Or else the Zone has
already been reborn, already a nexus of autonomy, a spreading virus
of chaos in its most exuberant clandestine form, white toadstools
springing up on the spots where Trog boys have masturbated alone
in the dark...
RENDAN, "THE CLEVER ONES." The sufis use
a technical term rend (adj. rendi, pl. rendan)
to designate one "clever enough to drink wine in secret without
getting caught": the dervish version of "Permissible Dissimulation"
(taqiyya, whereby Shiites are permitted to lie about their
true affiliation to avoid persecution as well as advance the purpose
of their propaganda).
On the plane of the "Path," the rend conceals
his spiritual state (hal) in order to contain it, work on
it alchemically, enhance it. This "cleverness" explains much of
the secrecy of the Orders, altho it remains true that many dervishes
do literally break the rules of Islam (shariah), offend tradition
(sunnah), and flout the customs of their society--all of
which gives them reason for real secrecy.
Ignoring the case of the "criminal" who uses sufism
as a mask--or rather not sufism per se but dervish-ism, almost
a synonym in Persia for laid-back manners & by extension a social
laxness, a style of genial and poor but elegant amorality--the above
definition can still be considered in a literal as well as metaphorical
sense. That is: some sufis do break the Law while still allowing
that the Law exists & will continue to exist; & they do
so from spiritual motives, as an exercise of will (himmah).
Nietzsche says somewhere that the free spirit will
not agitate for the rules to be dropped or even reformed, since
it is only by breaking the rules that he realizes his will to power.
One must prove (to oneself if no one else) an ability to overcome
the rules of the herd, to make one's own law & yet not fall
prey to the rancor & resentment of inferior souls which define
law & custom in ANY society. One needs, in effect, an individual
equivalent of war in order to achieve the becoming of the free spirit--one
needs an inert stupidity against which to measure one's own movement
& intelligence.
Anarchists sometimes posit an ideal society without
law. The few anarchist experiments which succeeded briefly (the
Makhnovists, Catalan) failed to survive the conditions of war which
permitted their existence in the first place--so we have no way
of knowing empirically if such an experiment could outlive the onset
of peace.
Some anarchists, however, like our late friend the
Italian Stirnerite "Brand," took part in all sorts of uprisings
and revolutions, even communist and socialist ones, because they
found in the moment of insurrection itself the kind of freedom they
sought. Thus while utopianism has so far always failed, the individualist
or existentialist anarchists have succeeded inasmuch as they have
attained (however briefly) the realization of their will to power
in war.
Nietzsche's animadversions against "anarchists"
are always aimed at the egalitarian-communist narodnik martyr types,
whose idealism he saw as yet one more survival of post-Xtian moralism--altho
he sometimes praises them for at least having the courage to revolt
against majoritarian authority. He never mentions Stirner, but I
believe he would have classified the Individualist rebel with the
higher types of "criminals," who represented for him (as for Dostoyevsky)
humans far superior to the herd, even if tragically flawed by their
obsessiveness and perhaps hidden motivations of revenge.
The Nietzschean overman, if he existed, would have
to share to some degree in this "criminality" even if he had overcome
all obsessions and compulsions, if only because his law could never
agree with the law of the masses, of state & society. His need
for "war" (whether literal or metaphorical) might even persuade
him to take part in revolt, whether it assumed the form of insurrection
or only of a proud bohemianism.
For him a "society without law" might have value
only so long as it could measure its own freedom against the subjection
of others, against their jealousy & hatred. The lawless &
short-lived "pirate utopias" of Madagascar & the Caribbean,
D'Annunzio's Republic of Fiume, the Ukraine or Barcelona--these
would attract him because they promised the turmoil of becoming
& even "failure" rather than the bucolic somnolence of a "perfected"
(& hence dead) anarchist society.
In the absence of such opportunities, this free
spirit would disdain wasting time on agitation for reform, on protest,
on visionary dreaming, on all kinds of "revolutionary martyrdom"--in
short, on most contemporary anarchist activity. To be rendi,
to drink wine in secret & not get caught, to accept the rules
in order to break them & thus attain the spiritual lift or energy-rush
of danger & adventure, the private epiphany of overcoming all
interior police while tricking all outward authority--this might
be a goal worthy of such a spirit, & this might be his definition
of crime.
(Incidentally, I think this reading helps explain
N's insistence on the MASK, on the secretive nature of the proto-
overman, which disturbs even intelligent but somewhat liberal commentators
like Kaufman. Artists, for all that N loves them, are criticized
for telling secrets. Perhaps he failed to consider that--paraphrasing
A. Ginsberg--this is our way of becoming "great"; and also
that--paraphrasing Yeats--even the truest secret becomes yet another
mask.)
As for the anarchist movement today: would we like
just once to stand on ground where laws are abolished & the
last priest is strung up with the guts of the last bureaucrat? Yeah
sure. But we're not holding our breath. There are certain causes
(to quote the Neech again) that one fails to quite abandon, if only
because of the sheer insipidity of all their enemies. Oscar Wilde
might have said that one cannot be a gentleman without being something
of an anarchist--a necessary paradox, like N's "radical aristocratism."
This is not just a matter of spiritual dandyism,
but also of existential commitment to an underlying spontaneity,
to a philosophical "tao." For all its waste of energy, in its very
formlessness, anarchism alone of all the ISMs approaches that one
type of form which alone can interest us today, that strange
attractor, the shape of chaos--which (one last quote) one
must have within oneself, if one is to give birth to a dancing star.
--Spring Equinox, 1989
IF ONE FICTIONAL FIGURE can be said to have dominated
the popcult of the eighties, it was the Cop. Fuckin' police ev-
erywhere you turned, worse than real life. What an incredible bore.
Powerful Cops--protecting the meek and humble--at
the expense of a half-dozen or so articles of the Bill of Rights-
-"Dirty Harry." Nice human cops, coping with human perversity, coming
out sweet 'n' sour, you know, gruff & knowing but still soft
inside--Hill Street Blues--most evil TV show ever.
Wiseass black cops scoring witty racist remarks against hick white
cops, who nevertheless come to love each other--Eddie Murphy, Class
Traitor. For that masochist thrill we got wicked bent cops who threaten
to topple our Kozy Konsensus Reality from within like Giger- designed
tapeworms, but naturally get blown away just in the nick of time
by the Last Honest Cop, Robocop, ideal amalgam of prosthesis and
sentimentality.
We've been obsessed with cops since the beginning--but
the rozzers of yore played bumbling fools, Keystone Kops, Car
54 Where Are You, booby-bobbies set up for Fatty Arbuckle
or Buster Keaton to squash & deflate. But in the ideal drama
of the eighties, the "little man" who once scattered bluebottles
by the hundred with that anarchist's bomb, innocently used to light
a cigarette--the Tramp, the victim with the sudden power of the
pure heart--no longer has a place at the center of narrative. Once
"we" were that hobo, that quasi-surrealist chaote hero who wins
thru wu- wei over the ludicrous minions of a despised &
irrelevant Order. But now "we" are reduced to the status of victims
without power, or else criminals. "We" no longer occupy
that central role; no longer the heros of our own stories, we've
been marginalized & replaced by the Other, the Cop.
Thus the Cop Show has only three characters--victim,
criminal, and policeperson--but the first two fail to be fully human--only
the pig is real. Oddly enough, human society in the eighties
(as seen in the other media) sometimes appeared to consist of the
same three cliche/archetypes. First the victims, the whining minorities
bitching about "rights"--and who pray tell did not belong
to a "minority" in the eighties? Shit, even cops complained about
their "rights" being abused. Then the criminals: largely non-white
(despite the obligatory & hallucinatory "integration" of the
media), largely poor (or else obscenely rich, hence even more alien),
largely perverse (i.e. the forbidden mirrors of "our" desires).
I've heard that one out of four households in America is robbed
every year, & that every year nearly half a million of us are
arrested just for smoking pot. In the face of such statistics (even
assuming they're "damned lies") one wonders who is NOT either victim
or criminal in our police-state-of-consciousness. The fuzz must
mediate for all of us, however fuzzy the interface-- they're
only warrior-priests, however profane. America's Most Wanted--the
most successful TV game show of the eighties--opened up for all
of us the role of Amateur Cop, hitherto merely a media fantasy of
middleclass resentment & revenge. Naturally the truelife Cop
hates no one so much as the vigilante--look what happens to poor
&/or non-white neighborhood self-protection groups like the
Muslims who tried to eliminate crack dealing in Brooklyn: the cops
busted the Muslims, the pushers went free. Real vigilantes threaten
the monopoly of enforcement, lÉse majest, more abominable
than incest or murder. But media(ted) vigilantes function perfectly
within the CopState; in fact, it would be more accurate to think
of them as unpaid (not even a set of matched luggage!)
informers: telemetric snitches, electro-stoolies, ratfinks-
for-a-day.
What is it that "America most wants"? Does this
phrase refer to criminals--or to crimes, to objects of desire in
their real presence, unrepresented, unmediated, literally stolen
& appropriated? America most wants...to fuck off work, ditch
the spouse, do drugs (because only drugs make you feel as good as
the people in TV ads appear to be), have sex with nubile jailbait,
sodomy, burglary, hell yes. What unmediated pleasures are NOT illegal?
Even outdoor barbecues violate smoke ordinances nowadays. The simplest
enjoyments turn us against some law; finally pleasure becomes too
stress- inducing, and only TV remains--and the pleasure of revenge,
vicarious betrayal, the sick thrill of the tattletale. America can't
have what it most wants, so it has America's Most Wanted
instead. A nation of schoolyard toadies sucking up to an elite of
schoolyard bullies.
Of course the program still suffers from a few strange
reality-glitches: for example, the dramatized segments are enacted
cinema verit style by actors; some viewers are so
stupid they believe they're seeing actual footage of real crimes.
Hence the actors are being continually harassed & even arrested,
along with (or instead of) the real criminals whose mugshots are
flashed after each little documentoid. How quaint, eh? No one really
experiences anything--everyone reduced to the status of ghosts--media-images
break off & float away from any contact with actual everyday
life-- PhoneSex--CyberSex. Final transcendence of the body: cybergnosis.
The media cops, like televangelical forerunners,
prepare us for the advent, final coming or Rapture of the police
state: the "Wars" on sex and drugs: total control totally leached
of all content; a map with no coordinates in any known space; far
beyond mere Spectacle; sheer ecstasy ("standing- outside-the-body");
obscene simulacrum; meaningless violent spasms elevated to the last
principle of governance. Image of a country consumed by images of
self-hatred, war between the schizoid halves of a split personality,
Super-Ego vs the Id Kid, for the heavyweight championship of an
abandoned landscape, burnt, polluted, empty, desolate, unreal. Just
as the murder-mystery is always an exercise in sadism, so the cop-fiction
always involves the contemplation of control. The image
of the inspector or detective measures the image of "our" lack of
autonomous substance, our transparency before the gaze of authority.
Our perversity, our helplessness. Whether we imagine them as "good"
or "evil," our obsessive invocation of the eidolons of the Cops
reveals the extent to which we have accepted the manichaean worldview
they symbolize. Millions of tiny cops swarm everywhere, like the
qlippoth, larval hungry ghosts--they fill the screen, as in Keaton's
famous two-reeler, overwhelming the foreground, an Antarctic where
nothing moves but hordes of sinister blue penguins.
We propose an esoteric hermeneutical exegesis of
the Surrealist slogan "Mort aux vaches!" We take it to refer
not to the deaths of individual cops ("cows" in the argot of the
period)--mere leftist revenge fantasy--petty reverse sadism--but
rather to the death of the image of the flic,
the inner Control & its myriad reflections in the NoPlace Place
of the media--the "gray room" as Burroughs calls it. Self-censorship,
fear of one's own desires, "conscience" as the interiorized voice
of consensus- authority. To assassinate these "security forces"
would indeed release floods of libidinal energy, but not the violent
running-amok predicted by the theory of Law 'n' Order.
Nietzschean "self-overcoming" provides the principle
of organization for the free spirit (as also for anarchist society,
at least in theory). In the police-state personality, libidinal
energy is dammed & diverted toward self-repression; any threat
to Control results in spasms of violence. In the free-spirit personality,
energy flows unimpeded & therefore turbulently but gently--its
chaos finds its strange attractor, allowing new spontaneous orders
to emerge.
In this sense, then, we call for a boycott of the
image of the Cop, & a moratorium on its production in art. In
this sense...
MORT AUX VACHES!
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