| TRAGEDY, EXCESS, DISAFFECTION |
| J A D E D |
S E C T I O N I :
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"How can you like that sort of thing?" she asked us, the next morning. "All these posers with their leather and their body-piercings, all acting so cynical and disaffected and 'modern primitive'. They act like they're so jaded, like they've seen it all before, and like that gives them the right to not give a fuck about anything. And they think it's so cool. It's all such bullshit. Sex and drugs do not give you the right to be jaded, to pretend that there's nothing left for you to experience. There's so much more to life than that." We had gone the night before to sin-a-matic, a dance club in L.A. Walking in, we had been engulfed in the driving, orgiastic, Dionysian rhythms of hard techno-industrial dance music. On a stage above the dance floor two large, ugly drag queens were spanking each other. Later, the dominatrix show began.... |
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This paper is about the ways in which Greek Tragedy pertains to certain modern (or postmodern) cultural phenomena: the ways in which the elements of Greek Tragedy can be deployed to make sense of the (post)modern culture-scape we see all around us. Which is to say that this paper is not about Greek Tragedy at all. Which is to say that this paper is about the only Greek Tragedy that has ever existed. All analyses are, in the final analysis, motivated by some present concern. I do not mean to ridicule or disparage all attempts at putting past phenomena into historical context, at describing things "as they really were." This "objective past", and its indifferent pursuit by the would-be scholar, are often useful fictions. An expository work need not make reference to its own contemporary motivations: it is often a useless distraction to do so. This essay, however, makes no attempt at hiding these contemporary motivations, and thus has little occasion to indulge in the fiction of an "objective past", and none whatsoever to indulge in the fiction of "indifferent pursuit". I am not concerned -- nor, at bottom, is anyone, ever -- with what the Greek texts themselves have to say to me, but rather with how I may use them. Or, to put the same thing in a slightly more palatable form: the content of the text, "what it has to say to me", is precisely a function of the ways in which it allows itself to be used. One more point, before we leave these realms of metacritical abstraction and bring the texts, the objects of this inquiry, up close. I said above that this essay does not attempt to hide its motivations. This should not be misconstrued as meaning that this essay makes its motivations explicit. This is, strictly speaking, impossible: the very concept of "motivation", as I am deploying it, precludes the possibility of a motivation being exhibited self-referentially. Not only does the presence of the self-referential piece of text -- the part that would supposedly "exhibit" the motivation -- necessarily alter that motivation; but once the concept of "motivation" is deployed self-referentially, one can no longer ignore the problematic question: what motivates the concept of "motivation" itself. And of course, this problem is insoluble. Thus the concept of "motivation" can only be applied to something other than itself and its applications. The motives behind a text are always ulterior. Assuming, for the moment, that Nietzsche's distinction between the Dionysian and the Apollinian is still applicable to today's cultural productions, it would seem that the Dionysian is on the increase. (Whether this means that the Apollinian is on the decline is another question, one which we shall attempt to address later.) That most of the clamor over Bacchus's abrupt entrance in the sixties has died down is not so much an indication that the god has left as that he has become comfortably settled in the pantheon of (post)modern culture. To take an example from just one corner of the current culture-scape: dance clubs and raves -- those Dionysian festivals in the age of mechanical reproduction -- that were usually illegal and underground five years ago have become legitimate, accepted (and often profitable) institutions. There are some, of course, who argue that this legality and legitimacy -- of raves as of avant-garde art -- are fatal, that a "legal rave" is an oxymoron, that the Dionysian can only exist as a complete and total transgression. "wisdom, and particularly Dionysian wisdom, is an unnatural abomination;....wisdom is a crime against nature." (Nietzsche p. 69) "In the heroic effort of the individual to attain universality, in the attempt to transcend the curse of individuation and to become the one world-being, he suffers in his own person the primordial contradiction that is concealed in things, which means that he commits sacrilege and suffers." (Nietzsche p. 71) In this view, it was essential to the character of the Dionysian that it was heterodox to the Greek culture that it invaded, that the Bacchic rituals were in some way transgressive, that Bacchus was (or was believed to be) an alien. Perhaps Euripides' Bacchus was so coy about his identity precisely because he was afraid that he might otherwise have been made welcome, and thus lost the source of his power: it was only by being resisted that he could be strong. It should be noted in passing that while the Dionysian may valorize transgression, and perhaps invariably does so, not all valorizations of transgression are Dionysian. This is especially important to keep in mind if one attempts to trace the genealogy of those contemporary cultural phenomena that comprise much of the subject matter of this essay. While I have space for only the barest outline of such a genealogy here, it will still be obvious that many of the ancestors of this "postmodern Dionysian" are not themselves Dionysian. For example, much of the contemporary aesthetic can be traced to surrealism, which, though transgressive, was generally un-Dionysian: André Breton's famous edict concerning crowds and revolvers was intended to be a radical affirmation of freedom for the individual, a category with which the Dionysian is not concerned except as something to be transcended or negated. One might see something more Dionysian in those fringes of surrealism -- such as Artaud's "Theatre of Cruelty", or the writings of Georges Bataille -- which are perhaps more closely related to the cultural aesthetic we're discussing here. But as I have said, this faint indication of the genealogy of popular culture is a gesture towards a project that I do not intend to carry out. If this abortive gesture has a purpose, it is perhaps only to demonstrate that the Dionysian is often absent where we would most expect him, and present in the most unexpected of places: one of the original theoretical justifications of impressionist painting (to give one random example) was that it was a revolt against the formal principium individuationis of western painting. The reader may already be skeptical about my applying the term "Dionysian" to something so frivolous and decadent as a rave. After all, a modern reader cringes, as Nietzsche did later in his career, when reading Nietzsche's naïve assertions that Wagnerian opera was a rebirth of the Dionysian; how much worse it must be to hear this naïve and pretentious pedant (yours truly) seeming to make the same assertion about Lords of Acid. Indeed, we shall have reason to question that problematic formulation already used, that of the "postmodern Dionysian", but in order to do so productively, we must not dismiss the possibility of such a phenomenon too quickly. Consider the following, which was posted to a usenet news group not long ago. That these "musings" are really rather stupid only makes their similarity to the passages from Nietzsche all the more striking: |
| "It was with them [the Greek festivals of Dionysus] that the destruction of the principium individuationis for the first time becomes an artistic phenomenon." (Nietzsche 40) |
| "Under the charm of the Dionysian not only is the union between man and man reaffirmed, but nature which has become alienated, hostile, or subjugated, celebrates once more her reconciliation with her lost son, man."(Nietzsche 37) |
| "...this is the most immediate effect of the Dionysian tragedy, that the state and society and, quite generally, the gulfs between man and man give way to an overwhelming feeling of unity leading back to the very heart of nature." (Nietzsche 59) |
| "...now all the rigid, hostile barriers that necessity, caprice, or "impudent convention" have fixed between man and man are broken. Now, with the gospel of universal harmony, each one feels himself not only united, reconciled, and fused with his neighbor, but as one with him..."(Nietzsche 37) |
| "...under the influence of the narcotic draught, of which the songs of all primitive men and peoples speak,...everything subjective vanishes into complete self-forgetfulness."(Nietzsche 36) |
| "In song and in dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community; [....] he feels himself a god, he himself now walks about enchanted, in ecstasy, like the gods he saw walking in his dreams. He is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art: in these paroxysms of intoxication the artistic power of all nature reveals itself to the highest gratification of the primordial unity."(Nietzsche 37) |
| "In the Dionysian dithyramb man is incited to the greatest exaltation of all his symbolic faculties; something never before experienced struggles for utterance -- the annihilation of the veil of maya, oneness as the soul of the race and of nature itself. The essence of nature is now to be expressed symbolically; we need a new world of symbols; and the entire symbolism of the body is called into play, not the mere symbolism of the lips, face, and speech but the whole pantomime of dancing, forcing every member into rhythmic movement. Then the other symbolic powers suddenly press forward, particularly those of music, in rhythmics, dynamics, and harmony." (Nietzsche 40) |
Now, where will the dancing be? Show me Cadmus, in The Bacchae ll.182-186 |
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Of course, most of the Nietzsche passages cited above are precisely those that now seem to us most dated, most naïve, most romantic -- in all the modern pejorative senses of that word -- a defect shared by our usenet raver. But, as the title of this essay indicates, this optimism seems to me far from typical within the cultural scene that he describes. As the brief dialogue with which I began this essay hopefully conveys, the usual pose of the postmodern Bacchant resembles Nietzsche's "Dionysian man": "both have once looked truly into the essence of things, they have gained knowledge, and nausea inhibits action....Not reflection, no -- true knowledge, an insight into the horrible truth, outweighs any motive for action..." (Nietzsche 60) Indeed, this is one of the difficulties of Nietzsche's conception of the Dionysian: that it seems to alternate between "the terrible wisdom of Silenus" (45), the "black lake of sadness" (70), "suffering, primal and eternal, the sole ground of the world" (45) on the one hand, and numerous aestheticized, romanticized images of "universal harmony", "reconciliation" (37), and "an overwhelming feeling of unity leading back to the very heart of nature" (59) on the other. His later synthesis of these two characterizations of the Dionysian -- for example on page 71: "In the heroic effort of the individual to attain universality, in the attempt to transcend the curse of individuation and to become the one world-being, he suffers in his own person the primordial contradiction that is concealed in things, which means that he commits sacrilege and suffers." -- while interesting, do not seem to exhaust the problem. One wonders whether this image of "unity" is really properly Dionysian, or whether Nietzsche is projecting a romantic, pantheistic ideal somewhere it doesn't belong. Yes, the Dionysian intoxication is an ecstasy, an annihilation of the principium individuationis, the individual losing himself. But must the individual necessarily lose himself to "universality"? Are "the curse of individuation" and "the one world-being" the only alternatives? Are there not other forms that ecstasy can take? Might there not also be an ecstasy of fragmentation? It is precisely here, it seems to me, that our "postmodern Dionysian", if we still wish to retain that term, must split with Nietzsche's conception of the Dionysian. Indeed, one wonders if it is not precisely here that the older Nietzsche split with the younger: though Nietzsche denigrates Buddhism along with Christianity, must he not have eventually noticed the similarity between this Dionysian goal of "attaining universality" and the Buddhist goal of "enlightenment"? Isn't this conception of the Dionysian precisely that "romanticism" for which the older Nietzsche, in his Attempt at a Self-Criticism, criticized his earlier work? For this romantic pantheism can only lead to the "will-negating" tendencies of religion: "in sum, as romantics end, as Christians" (26).
The postmodern Dionysian has apparently switched places with the Apollinian: the Dionysian was once the terrible truth -- "suffering, primal and eternal, the sole ground of the world" (Nietzsche 45) -- , was once the reality over which was cast the Apollinian veil of illusion; now the removal of this veil is "felt as loss, as unreality." One begins to wonder if perhaps it has always been so, if perhaps the "Dionysian" is not the truth beneath the Apollinian veil, but rather is yet another veil cast over the Apollinian. I referred earlier to Nietzsche's being in some ways "naïve", perhaps this is so also in Schiller's technical sense of "naïve" which Nietzsche associates with the Apollinian artist. One could read The Birth of Tragedy as the Apollinian's own myth of origins. While Nietzsche conceives of Tragedy as being "the Apollinian embodiment of Dionysian insights"2, it seems to us now that these "Dionysian insights" are always already so embodied, that the idea of pre-Apollinian experience is purely fictitious, that "the terrible wisdom of Silenus" is not the "substratum" of the Apollinian world of beauty, but one of its products: one that has been projected outside of and prior to the Apollinian world that created it. |
2 While my text reads "the Dionysian embodiment of Dionysian insights" (65), I'm quite certain, given the sense of the rest of the paragraph, that this is a typo.
Here, my thesis is simple: humans construct their own reality, and they get the materials needed for this construction from the cultural productions that they consume. Art does not imitate life, life imitates art, and this because life is made out of art. Life is a bricolage, and we are all bricoleurs Tragedy, then, is the art from which we scavenge material for constructing our pain.
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-- from my own "Random Thoughts" on this | course submitted at the beginning of the semester |
| In the above passage I was looking at "Tragedy" as a response to real suffering -- suffering conceived as a noumenal, pre-semiotic, non-constructed presence. "Tragedy" is conceived as the semiotic apparatus with which we "deal" with suffering. We use Tragedy to construct our pain, make it intelligible, perceivable: Tragedy gives us that set of categories by which noumenal suffering is rendered phenomenal. "Tragedy" is what gives human suffering meaning, not merely in the existential, philosophical sense ("What's the meaning of life?"), but in the usual, everyday sense of the word ("I didn't know what that word meant."). But once we look beyond the immediate appeal of such a facile explanation of "Tragedy", we see that this account is a displacement, or even a reversal, of what is going on right here, right now. We are not, right now, using Tragedy as a tool for conceiving some pre-conceptual "suffering", we are using the concept of suffering as a way of theorizing Tragedy. Tragedy is now the problem, and "human suffering" is the semiotic apparatus with which we "deal" with -- construct, theorize, represent -- Tragedy. "[The lyrist's] own willing, longing, moaning, rejoicing, are to him symbols by which he interprets music." (Nietzsche 55) One could, of course, continue to reverse the positions of "suffering" and "Tragedy" indefinitely: in the next iteration it would again be "suffering" -- though this time the concept of suffering, rather than some pre-conceptual presence -- that would be the "problem", and the concept of some pre-theoretical "Tragedy" that is our way of "dealing" with it; and in the next iteration after that the concept of pre-theoretical "Tragedy" is the "problem", and our concept of "the concept of suffering" is our way of "dealing" with that.
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| Having perceived the impending collapse immanent in our original constructions of Tragedy above, the obvious next step is to remove ourselves from this system, to strive for an "objective distance" from which this entire "Tower of Babel" can be perceived and made sense of. We have taken a first step in that direction already, simply by giving it a name ("Tower of Babel"), and perhaps the narrative above has already produced a neat, stable mental image something like figure 1. But let us not take this "obvious" next step; let us resist our linguistic compulsion to recuperate contradiction as "synthesis"; let us cross out figure 1. And let us, instead return to our original object: the jaded, hip, and disaffected -- the postmodern Bacchant -- who continues, despite our best theoretical efforts, to inhabit a world "based on semblance, art, deception, points of view, and the necessity of perspectives and error." (Nietzsche, 23) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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A P O S T M O D E R N A P O L L O ?
| "Do you really think that all of them are serious, though?" someone else asked rhetorically. "Sure, some of them are, but a lot of them are like us. We looked pretty jaded and disaffected last night, all wearing black, sitting in the back, smoking -- and we meant to, that was the fun of it: getting up in costume, striking a pose, pretending that acting jaded and cynical made us cool. That we don't believe any of it only makes it that much more entertaining..." |
| Having, perhaps arbitrarily, associated (though not equated) Nietzsche's notion of the Dionysian with Jameson's notion of schizophrenia, the obvious next step, the too obvious next step, would be to relate Nietzsche's notion of the Apollinian to Jameson's notion of pastiche. ** I have said that the pose of the postmodern bacchant was that of the "Dionysian man." One should give full weight to the word pose. It is a rôle. Nietzsche tells us that Hamlet is the archetypal [ww] Dionysian man. The postmodern bacchant is not Hamlet, rather s/he is the actor playing Hamlet. Of all Shakespearean characters, Hamlet is the most sought-after rôle. Paradoxially, the rôle of the Dionysian man, the man whom truth has robbed of all motivation for action, seduces us to action. By this pantomime of despair, we innoculate ourselves against despair. Having, perhaps arbitrarily, associated (though not equated) Nietzsche's notion of the Dionysian with Jameson's notion of schizophrenia, the obvious next step, the too obvious next step, would be to relate Nietzsche's notion of the Apollinian to Jameson's notion of pastiche. It's very absurdity made it the most profound statement possible. (attempt at a self-criticism) In comments on a previous paper (in which I discussed the significance of Hegel's excessively abstract prose) I was told that I was "reacting to the appearance of abstraction, not to what's being said". My most succinct response to this objection is "So?" Or, to be less glib: my point was precisely the significance of this appearance. "What's being said", to the extent that it is separable from this appearance, was irrelevant to my purpose. A more cogent objection to my critique of Hegel would be its utter hypocrisy: " 'Every lower irrational individuality'? I know, it's comforting to call them that. [....] But they're called worms, Georg, WORMS; and you can't reason them away. There's really no escape." As if my petty rhetoric was any less of an aestheticization than Hegel's; as if my own narcissistic fascination with language could actually bring us any closer to truth.
And I do wish to analyze the text -- so far, I have not done so, having been preoccupied with these vague metacritical concerns -- so let us deploy our dichotomies: the subject is restrained; Hegel is pithed on the dissecting table[, next to the chance juxtaposition of an umbrella and a sowing machine]; let us proceed. ...I was told that I was "reacting to the appearance of abstraction, not to what's being said". True enough, though my point was precisely the significance of this appearance. "What's being said"... {Hegel's abstraction symptomatic of/mirrors what he's doing: romanticizing, aestheticizing, beautifying, "dressing up" (as Pentheus was "dressed up" by Dionysus?) -- this is what (some? all?) theory is. The romantic poet lying in his garret, dying of the cough. "It's so cool! Sid Viscious killed his girlfriend and she's dead!" What, also, the jaded, disaffected aesthetic/lifestyle is -- what Hegel does with words, the modern primitive does with tattoos, piercings, etc. BODY AS THEORY. } {Greek theatre: masks, personae. Was Greek Tragedy really so "close" as I implied earlier, or did the masks' distancing make up for the closeness of the character? By modern standards, a Greek production would be almost bauhaus: the abstraction of the human form! } (DON'T BELIEVE A WORD OF IT. THE AUTHOR DOESN'T: WHY SHOULD YOU?) "A man stands at a crossroads." A man stands on the edge of a precipice. He is gripped by the fear that he will fall, that some force outside of himself will compel him to hurl into the abyss. Finally, the terror grows so unbearable that he hurls himself into the abyss, claiming his own fate, and thus becoming, as Schelling would tell us, a "tragic hero". [aside box:] Essentialism is reductive: to "get at" essence is (essentially !?) to reduce to essence, i.e. to reduce, to make less. A thing is(!) more than its essence. Holy Communion: a manifestation of the Dionysian within Christianity, or its repression? (Homeopathic remedy, inoculation against?) Or is communion a symptom -- i.e. an incomplete repression? Or could communion be, along the lines suggested by my previous paper, an abstraction of the Dionysian, a distancing re-presentation of the Dionysian itself? We can see that even within the Christian tradition a further distancing has taken place: in earlier theologies of the blessed sacrament, it was believed that the bread and wine really do, in some spiritual sense, become Christ's body and Christ's blood. The sparagmos and homophagy are not merely represented but literally reenacted every time communion is taken. In more modern theologies, Presbyterian and Methodist for example, this is no longer the case: the bread is just bread, the "wine" is just grape juice. (Presbyterians and Methodists do not allow alcohol in their ceremonies, thus eliminating any possibility of a Dionysian intoxication.) Christ is spiritually present in the ceremony merely as a benevolent host inviting the faithful to eat, not his body, or anybody's body, but just the simple food of bread and grape juice. [aside box:] Pain and Kantian Metaphysics. AUTHOR Scarry, Elaine. TITLE The body in pain : the making and unmaking of the world / Elaine Scarry. IMPRINT New York : Oxford University Press, 1985. DESCRIPT vii, 385 p. ; 25 cm. NOTE Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN/ISSN 0195036018 : SUBJECT Pain. War. Torture. 'äääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääää" û LOCATION CALL NO. STATUS û û1 > HON BJ1409 S35 1985 DUE 12-10-93 û 'äääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääääää"I said earlier that the usual pose of the postmodern Bacchant resembles Nietzsche's "Dionysian man": "both have once looked truly into the essence of things, they have gained knowledge, and nausea inhibits action....Not reflection, no -- true knowledge, an insight into the horrible truth, outweighs any motive for action..." (Nietzsche 60) Thus Silenic wisdom can serve as a justification for Once, transgression justified suffering. Oedipus committed patricide and incest, and thereby brought suffering onto himself. Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, thereby bringing misery into the world. Tragedy was a way of justifying the world to ourselves. It does seem that this sort of tragedy is dead. Perhaps we have utterly given up even pretending that the world is fair, or perhaps two millennia of Christianity have convinced us that whatever happens, we deserve it; but whatever the reason, we no longer attempt to justify the world to ourselves in this way. Instead, we attempt to justify ourselves to the world. Now, suffering justifies transgression. Consider the song "Gimme the Car", by the Violent Femmes, which expresses a very typical modern attitude towards moral transgression and suffering. The song opens with the singer trying to convince his dad to give him the car: come on dad, gimme the car tonight i got this girl i wanna... [...] i'll tell you what, i'll tell you what i'm gonna do i'm gonna pick her up, i'm gonna get her drunk i'm gonna make her cry, i'm gonna get her high [....] and then I'm gonna touch her all over her body...In other words, the singer is intent on date-raping someone, certainly a morally transgressive act, a sin. But then the singer goes on: what's wrong? what's right? i don't care when i hate my life what's wrong? what's right? y'know people don't care, when they hate their lives but how can i explain personal pain how can i explain personal pain how can i explain my voice is in vain how can i explain the deep down driving... driving... driving... {One is tempted to say that it was (and perhaps still is) society that justified individual suffering through the concept of transgression (not always the transgression of the individual: the "sins of the fathers" will do just as well, it seems), and that it is the individual that justifies his (and her? or only his?) own transgression through the concept of suffering. Does this make the new disaffection merely another tiresome manifestation of bourgeois individualism? Or is there some way in which this justification of transgression transcends the increasingly outmoded "modernist" ideology within which it was originally construed?} come on dad, gimme the car tonight come on dad, gimme the car tonight i got this girl i wanna... come on dad, gimme the car come on dad, gimme the car tonight i'll tell you what, i'll tell you what i'm gonna do i'm gonna pick her up, i'm gonna get her drunk i'm gonna make her cry, i'm gonna get her high i'm gonna make her laugh, i'm gonna make her sh... woman, woman, woman see i know she's it cuz i'm gonna touch her all over her body, gonna touch her all over her body, gonna touch her, all over her body, gonna touch her all over her body, AND SHE CAN TOUCH ME all over my body she can touch me all over my body she can touch me all over my body she can touch me all over my body time goes by i can feel myself growing old burning inside's makin this boy turn out cold what's wrong? what's right? i don't care when i hate my life what's wrong? what's right? y'know people don't care, when they hate their lives but how can i explain personal pain how can i explain personal pain how can i explain my voice is in vain how can i explain the deep down driving... driving... driving... we're driving... we're driving... we're driving... we're... hey dad, speaking of driving... come on dad, gimme the car tonight so much he don't understand just might never make it to a man come on dad, gimme the car come on dad i ain't no runt come on girl gimme your... cuz i ain't had much to live for i ain't had much to live for you know i ain't had much to live for you know i ain't had much to live for -Violent Femmes "Gimme The Car" life is the displaced phantom image of existence; life is the shiny happy face of a non-returnable coke bottle grinning cheerfully in the desert, five-hundred miles from the chemical warfare, the melting skin; life is art, the phantom displaced image of anti-art; life murders existence with metonymy; it is against the law to exist; existence is logocide; existence does not exist. |
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