File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2002/lyotard.0201, message 55


Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 00:54:31 -0800
From: Judy <jaw-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: RE: Baudrillard


Lois and all
here is a repost of the Baudrillard essay.

>>
>>
>>  The spirit of terrorism
>>  Jean Baudrillard
>>  Le Monde 2/11/01
>>
>>  Translated: Dr Rachel Bloul, School of Social sciences, Australian
>National
>>  University.
>>
>>  In footnotes: personal comments to remind me to think about these points
>>  when later analyzing the piece.
>>  In italics, details about not-quite-direct translations.
>>
>>  We have had many global events from Diana's death to the World Cup, or
>even
>>  violent and real events from wars to genocides. But not one global
>symbolic
>>  event, that is an event not only with global repercussions, but one  that
>>  questions the very process of globalization. All through the stagnant 90s,
>>  there has been "la greve des evenements" (literally "an events strike",
>>  translated from a phrase of the Argentino writer Macedonio Fernandez).
>Well,
>>  the strike is off. We are even facing, with the World Trade Center & New
>>  York hits, the absolute event, the "mother" of events, the pure event
>which
>>  is the essence of all the events that never happened.
>>
>>  Not only are all history and power plays disrupted, but so are the
>>  conditions of analysis. One must take one's time. For as long as events
>were
>>  at a standstill, one had to anticipate and overcome them. But when they
>>  speed up, one must slow down; without getting lost under a mass of
>>  discourses and the shadow of war ("nuage de la guerre": literally clouds
>>  announcing war), and while keeping undiminished the unforgettable flash of
>>  images.
>>
>>  All the speeches and commentaries betray a gigantic abreaction to the
>event
>>  itself and to the fascination that it exerts. Moral condemnation and the
>>  sacred union against terrorism are equal to the prodigious jubilation
>>  engendered by witnessing this global superpower being destroyed; better,
>by
>>  seeing it more or less self-destroying, even suiciding spectacularly.
>Though
>>  it is (this superpower) that has, through its unbearable power, engendered
>>  all that violence brewing around the world, and therefore this terrorist
>>  imagination which -unknowingly- inhabits us all.
>>
>>  That we have dreamed of this event, that everybody without exception has
>>  dreamt of it, because everybody must dream of the destruction of any power
>>  hegemonic to that degree,  - this is unacceptable for Western moral
>>  conscience, but it is still a fact, and one which is justly measured by
>the
>>  pathetic violence of all those discourses which attempt to erase it.
>>
>>  It is almost they who did it, but we who wanted it. If one does not take
>>  that into account, the event lost all symbolic dimension to become a pure
>>  accident, an act purely arbitrary, the murderous fantasy of a few
>fanatics,
>>  who would need only to be suppressed. But we know very well that this is
>not
>>  so. Thus all those delirious, counter-phobic exorcisms: because evil is
>>  there, everywhere as an obscure object of desire. Without this deep
>>  complicity, the event would not have had such repercussions, and without
>>  doubt, terrorists know that in their symbolic strategy they can count on
>>  this unavowable complicity.
>>
>>  This goes much further than hatred for the dominant global power from the
>>  disinherited and the exploited, those who fell on the wrong side of global
>>  order. That malignant desire is in the very heart of those who share (this
>>  order's) benefits. An allergy to all definitive order, to all definitive
>>  power is happily universal, and the two towers of the World Trade Center
>>  embodied perfectly, in their very double-ness (literally twin-ness), this
>>  definitive order.
>>
>>  No need for a death wish or desire for self-destruction, not even for
>>  perverse effects. It is very logically, and inexorably, that the
>(literally:
>>  "rise to power of power") exacerbates a will to destroy it.  And power is
>>  complicit with its own destruction. When the two towers collapsed, one
>could
>>  feel that they answered the suicide of the kamikazes by their own suicide.
>>  It has been said: "God cannot declare war on Itself". Well, It can. The
>>  West, in its God-like position (of divine power, and absolute moral
>>  legitimacy) becomes suicidal, and declares war on itself.
>>
>>  Numerous disaster movies are witness to this phantasm, which they
>obviously
>>  exorcise through images and submerge under special effects. But the
>>  universal attraction these movies exert, as pornography does, shows how
>>  (this phantasm's) realization is always close at hand - the impulse to
>deny
>>  any system being all the stronger if such system is close to perfection or
>>  absolute supremacy.
>>
>>  It is even probable that the terrorists (like the experts!) did not
>>  anticipate the collapse of the Twin Towers, which was, far more than (the
>>  attack of) the Pentagon, the deepest symbolic shock. The symbolic collapse
>>  of a whole system is due to an unforeseen complicity, as if, by collapsing
>>  (themselves), by suiciding, the towers had entered the game to complete
>the
>>  event.
>>
>>  In a way, it is the entire system that, by its internal fragility, helps
>the
>>  initial action. The more the system is globally concentrated to constitute
>>  ultimately only one network, the more it becomes vulnerable at a single
>>  point (already one little Filipino hacker has succeeded, with his laptop,
>to
>>  launch the I love you virus that wrecked entire networks). Here, eighteen
>>  (dix-huit in the text)  kamikazes, through the absolute arm that is death
>>  multiplied by technological efficiency, start a global catastrophic
>process.
>>
>>  When the situation is thus monopolized by global power, when one deals
>with
>>  this formidable condensation of all functions through technocratic
>machinery
>>  and absolute ideological hegemony (pensee unique), what other way is
>there,
>>  than a terrorist reversal of the situation (literally 'transfer of
>>  situation': am I too influenced by early translation as 'reversal'?)? It
>is
>>  the system itself that has created the objective conditions for this
>brutal
>>  distortion. By taking all the cards to itself, it forces the Other to
>change
>>  the rules of the game. And the new rules are ferocious, because the stakes
>>  are ferocious. To a system whose excess of power creates an unsolvable
>>  challenge, terrorists respond by a definitive act that is also
>unanswerable
>>  (in the text: which cannot be part of the exchange circuit). Terrorism is
>an
>>  act that reintroduces an irreducible singularity in a generalized exchange
>>  system. Any singularity (whether species, individual or culture), which
>has
>>  paid with its death for the setting up of a global circuit dominated by a
>>  single power, is avenged today by this terrorist situational transfer.
>>
>>  Terror against terror - there is no more ideology behind all that. We are
>
>>  now far from ideology and politics. No ideology, no cause, not even an
>>  Islamic cause, can account for the energy which feeds terror. It (energy)
>>  does not aim anymore to change the world, it aims (as any heresy in its
>>  time) to radicalize it through sacrifice, while the system aims to realize
>>  (the world) through force.
>>
>>  Terrorism, like virus, is everywhere. Immersed globally, terrorism, like
>the
>>  shadow of any system of domination, is ready everywhere to emerge as a
>>  double agent. There is no boundary to define it; it is in the very core of
>>  this culture that fights it - and the visible schism (and hatred) that
>>  opposes, on a global level, the exploited and the underdeveloped against
>the
>>  Western world, is secretly linked to the internal fracture of the dominant
>>  system. The latter can face any visible antagonism. But with terrorism -
>and
>>  its viral structure -, as if every domination apparatus were creating its
>>  own antibody, the chemistry of its own disappearance; against this almost
>>  automatic reversal of its own puissance, the system is powerless. And
>>  terrorism is the shockwave of this silent reversal.
>>
>>  Thus, it is no shock of civilizations, of religions, and it goes much
>beyond
>>  Islam and America, on which one attempts to focus the conflict to give the
>>  illusion of a visible conflict and of an attainable solution (through
>>  force). It certainly is a fundamental antagonism, but one which shows,
>>  through the spectrum of America (which maybe by itself the epicentre but
>not
>>  the embodiment of globalization) and through the spectrum of Islam (which
>is
>>  conversely not the embodiment of terrorism), triumphant globalization
>>  fighting with itself. In this way it is indeed a World War, not the third
>>  one, but the fourth and only truly World War, as it has as stakes
>>  globalization itself. The first two World Wars were classic wars. The
>first
>>  ended European supremacy and the colonial era. The second ended Nazism.
>The
>>  third, which did happen, as a dissuasive Cold War, ended communism. From
>one
>>  war to the other, one went further each time toward a unique world order.
>>  Today the latter, virtually accomplished, is confronted by antagonistic
>>  forces, diffused in the very heart of the global, in all its actual
>>  convulsions. Fractal war in which all cells, all singularities revolt as
>>  antibodies do. It is a conflict so unfathomable that, from time to time,
>one
>>  must preserve the idea of war through spectacular productions such as the
>>  Gulf (production) and today Afghanistan's. But the fourth World War is
>>  elsewhere. It is that which haunts every global order, every hegemonic
>>  domination; -if Islam dominated the world, terrorism would fight against
>it.
>>  For it is the world itself which resists domination.
>>
>>  Terrorism is immoral. The event of the World Trade Center, this symbolic
>>  challenge is immoral, and it answers a globalization that is immoral. Then
>>  let us be immoral ourselves and, if we want to understand something, let
>us
>>  go somewhat beyond Good and Evil. As we have, for once, an event that
>>  challenges not only morals, but every interpretation, let us try to have
>the
>>  intelligence of Evil. The crucial point is precisely there: in this total
>>  counter-meaning to Good and Evil in Western philosophy, the philosophy of
>>  Enlightenment. We naively believe that the progress of the Good, its rise
>in
>>  all domains (sciences, techniques, democracy, human rights) correspond to
>a
>>  defeat of Evil. Nobody seems to understand that Good and Evil rise
>>  simultaneously, and in the same movement. The triumph of the One does not
>>  produce the erasure of the Other. Metaphysically, one considers Evil as an
>>  accident, but this axiom, embedded in all manichean fights of Good against
>>  Evil, is illusory. Good does not reduce Evil, nor vice-versa: there are
>both
>>  irreducible, and inextricable from each other. In fact, Good could defeat
>>  Evil only by renouncing itself, as by appropriating a global power
>monopoly,
>>  it creates a response of proportional violence.
>>
>>  In the traditional universe, there was still a balance of Good and Evil,
>>  according to a dialectical relation that more or less insured tension and
>>  equilibrium in the moral universe; - a little as in the Cold War, the
>>  face-to-face of the two powers insured an equilibrium of terror. Thus,
>there
>>  was no supremacy of one on the other. This symmetry is broken as soon as
>>  there is a total extrapolation of the Good (an hegemony of the positive
>over
>>  any form of negativity, an exclusion of death, of any potential
>adversarial
>>  force: the absolute triumph of the Good). From there, the equilibrium is
>>  broken, and it is as if Evil regained an invisible autonomy, developing
>then
>>  in exponential fashion.
>>
>>  Keeping everything in proportion, it is more or less what happened in the
>>  political order with the erasure of communism and the global triumph of
>>  liberal power: a fantastical enemy appeared, diffused over the whole
>planet,
>>  infiltrating everywhere as a virus, surging from every interstice of
>power.
>>  Islam. But Islam is only the moving front of the crystallization of this
>>  antagonism. This antagonism is everywhere and it is in each of us. Thus,
>>  terror against terror... But asymmetrical terror... And this asymmetry
>>  leaves the global superpower totally disarmed. Fighting itself, it can
>only
>>  founder in its own logic of power relations, without being able to play in
>>  the field of symbolic challenge and death, as it has eliminated the latter
>>  from its own culture.
>>
>>  Until now this integrating power had mostly succeeded to absorb every
>>  crisis, every negativity, creating therefore a deeply hopeless situation
>>  (not only for the damned of the earth, but for the rich and the privileged
>>  too, in their radical comfort). The fundamental event is that terrorists
>>  have finished with empty suicides; they now organize their own death in
>>  offensive and efficient ways, according to a strategic intuition, that is
>>  the intuition of the immense fragility of their adversary, this system
>>  reaching its quasi perfection and thus vulnerable to the least spark. They
>>  succeeded in making their own death the absolute arm against a system that
>>  feeds off the exclusion of death, whose ideal is that of zero death. Any
>>  system of zero death is a zero sum system. And all the means of dissuasion
>>  and destruction are powerless against an enemy who has already made his
>>  death a counter-offensive. "What of American bombings! Our men want to die
>>  as much as Americans want to live!" This explains the asymmetry of 7, 000
>>  deaths in one blow against a system of zero death.
>>
>>  Therefore, here, death is the key (to the game) not only the brutal
>>  irruption of death in direct, in real time, but also the irruption of a
>>  more-than-real death: symbolic and sacrificial death - the absolute, no
>>  appeal event.
>>
>>  This is the spirit of terrorism.
>>
>>  Never is it to attack the system through power relations. This belongs to
>>  the revolutionary imaginary imposed by the system itself, which survives
>by
>>  ceaselessly bringing those who oppose it to fight in the domain of the
>real,
>>  which is always its own. But (it) moves the fight into the symbolic
>domain,
>>  where the rule is the rule of challenge, of reversal, of escalation. Thus,
>>  death can be answered only though an equal or superior death. (Terrorism)
>>  challenges the system by a gift that the latter can reciprocate only
>through
>>  its own death and its own collapse.
>>
>>   The terrorist hypothesis is that the system itself suicides in response
>to
>>  the multiple challenges of death and suicide. Neither the system, nor
>power,
>>  themselves escape symbolic obligation -and in this trap resides the only
>>  chance of their demise (catastrophe). In this vertiginous cycle of the
>>  impossible exchange of death, the terrorist death is an infinitesimal
>point
>>  that provokes a gigantic aspiration, void and convection. Around this
>minute
>>  point, the whole system of the real and power gains in density,  freezes,
>>  compresses, and sinks in its own super-efficacy. The tactics of terrorism
>>  are to provoke an excess of reality and to make the system collapse under
>>  the weight of this excess. The very derision of the situation, as well as
>>  all the piled up violence of power, flips against it, for terrorist
>actions
>>  are both the magnifying mirror of the system's violence, and the model of
>a
>>  symbolic violence that it cannot access, the only violence it cannot
>exert:
>>  that of its own death.
>>
>>  This is why all this visible power cannot react against the minute, but
>>  symbolic death of a few individuals.
>>
>>  One must recognize the birth of a new terrorism, a new form of action that
>>  enters the game and appropriate its rules, the better to confuse it. Not
>>  only do these people not fight with equal arms, as they produce their own
>>  deaths, to which there is no possible response ("they are cowards"), but
>>  they appropriate all the arms of dominant power. Money and financial
>>  speculation, information technologies and aeronautics, the production of
>>  spectacle and media networks: they have assimilated all of modernity and
>>  globalization, while maintaining their aim to destroy it.
>>
>>  Most cunningly, they have even used the banality of American everyday life
>>  as a mask and double game. Sleeping in their suburbs, reading and studying
>>  within families, before waking up suddenly like delayed explosive devices.
>>  The perfect mastery of this secretiveness is almost as terrorist as the
>>  spectacular action of the 11 September. For it makes one suspect: any
>>  inoffensive individual can be a potential terrorist! If those terrorists
>>  could pass unnoticed, then anyone of us is an unnoticed criminal (each
>plane
>>  is suspect too), and ultimately, it might even be true. This might well
>>  correspond to an unconscious form of potential criminality, masked,
>>  carefully repressed, but always liable, if not to surge, at least to
>>  secretly vibrate with the spectacle of Evil. Thus, the event spreads out
>in
>>  its minutiae, the source of an even more subtle psychological (mental)
>>  terrorism.
>>
>>  The radical difference is that terrorists, while having at their disposal
>>  all the arms of the system, have also another fatal weapon: their own
>death.
>>  If they limited themselves to fighting the system with its own weapons,
>they
>>  would be immediately eliminated. If they did not oppose the system with
>>  their own death, they would disappear as  quickly as a useless sacrifice;
>>  this has almost always been the fate of terrorism until now (thus the
>>  Palestinian suicidal attacks) and the reason why it could not but fail.
>>
>>  Everything changed as soon as they allied all available modern means to
>this
>>  highly symbolic weapon. The latter infinitely multiplies their destructive
>>  potential. It is the multiplication of these two factors (which seem to us
>>  so irreconcilable) that gives them such superiority. Conversely, the
>>  strategy of zero death, of a technological, 'clean' war, precisely misses
>>  this transfiguration of 'real' power by symbolic power.
>>
>>  The prodigious success of such an attack poses a problem, and to
>understand
>>  it, one must tear oneself away from our Western perspective, to apprehend
>>  what happens in terrorists' minds and organization. Such efficacy, for us,
>>  would mean maximal calculation and rationality, something we have
>>  difficulties imagining in others. And even then, with us, there would
>always
>>  be, as in any rational organization or secret service, leaks and errors.
>>
>>  Thus, the secret of such success is elsewhere. The difference, with them,
>is
>>  that there is no work contract, but a pact and an obligation of sacrifice.
>>  Such obligation is secure from defection and corruption. The miracle is
>the
>>  adaptation to a global network, to technical protocols without any loss of
>>  this complicity for life and to the death. Contrary to the contract, the
>>  pact does not link individuals,  -even their 'suicide' is not individual
>>  heroism, it is a collective, sacrificial act, sealed by demanding ideals
>>  (I'm a bit free here but I feel it corresponds better to what is meant by
>>  'exigence ideale'). And it is the conjunction of these two mechanisms,
>born
>>  of an operational structure and of a symbolic pact, which makes possible
>>  such an excessive action.
>>
>>  We have no idea anymore of what is such a symbolic calculation, as in
>poker
>>  or potlatch, with minimal stakes and maximal result. That is, exactly what
>>  terrorists obtained in the attack on Manhattan, and which would be a good
>>  metaphor for chaos theory: an initial shock, provoking incalculable
>>  consequences, while American gigantic deployment ("Desert Storm") obtained
>>  only derisory effects; - the storm ending so to speak in the flutter of
>>  butterfly wings.
>>
>>  Suicidal terrorism was the terrorism of the poor; this is the terrorism of
>>  the rich. And that is what specially frighten us: they have become rich
>>  (they have every means) without ceasing to want to eradicate us.
>Certainly,
>>  according to our value system, they cheat: staking (gambling?) one's own
>>  death is cheating. But they could not care less, and the new rules of the
>>  game are not ours.
>>
>>  We try everything to discredit their actions. Thus, we call them
>"suicidal"
>>  and "martyrs". To add immediately that such martyrdom does not prove
>>  anything, that it has nothing to do with truth and even (quoting
>Nietzsche)
>>  that it is the enemy of truth. Certainly, their death does not prove
>>  anything, but there is nothing to prove in a system where truth itself is
>>  elusive --or are we pretending to own it? Besides, such a moral argument
>can
>>  be reversed. If the voluntary martyrdom of the kamikazes proves nothing,
>>  then the involuntary martyrdom of the victims cannot prove anything
>either,
>>  and there is something obscene in making it a moral argument (the above is
>>  not to negate their suffering and their death).
>>
>>  Another bad faith argument: these terrorists exchange their death for a
>>  place in Paradise. Their act is not gratuitous, thus it is not authentic.
>It
>>  would be gratuitous only if they did not believe in God, if their death
>was
>>  without hope, as is ours (yet Christian martyrs assumed just such sublime
>>  exchange). Thus, again, they do not fight with equal weapons if they have
>>  the right to a salvation we can no longer hope for. We have to lose
>>  everything by our death while they can pledge it for the highest stakes.
>>
>>  Ultimately, all that - causes, proofs, truth, rewards, means and ends-
>>  belongs to typically Western calculation. We even put a value to death in
>>  terms of interest rates, and quality/price ratio. Such economic
>calculations
>>  are the calculation of those poor who no longer have even the courage to
>pay
>>  (the price of death?).
>>
>>  What can happen, - apart from war, which is no more than a conventional
>>  protection screen? We talk of bio-terrorism, bacteriological war or
>nuclear
>>  terrorism. But none of that belongs to the domain of symbolic challenge,
>>  rather it belongs to an annihilation without speech, without glory,
>without
>>  risk - that is, to the domain of the final solution.
>>
>>  And to see in terrorist action a purely destructive logic is nonsense. It
>>  seems to me that their own death is inseparable from their action ( it is
>>  precisely what makes it a symbolic action), and not at all the impersonal
>>  elimination of the Other. Everything resides in the challenge and the
>duel,
>>  that is still in a personal, dual relation with the adversary. It is the
>>  power of the adversary that has humbled you, it is this power which must
>be
>>  humbled. And not simply exterminated... One must make (the adversary) lose
>>  face. And this cannot be obtained by pure force and by the suppression of
>>  the other. The latter must be aimed at, and hurt, as a personal adversary.
>>  Apart from the pact that links terrorists to each other, there is
>something
>>  like a dual pact with the adversary. It is then, exactly the opposite to
>the
>>  cowardice of which they are accused, and it is exactly the opposite of
>what
>>  Americans do, for example in the Gulf War (and which they are doing again
>in
>>  Afghanistan): invisible target, operational elimination.
>>
>>  Of all these vicissitudes, we particularly remember seeing images. And we
>>  must keep this proliferation of images, and their fascination, for they
>>  constitute, willy nilly, our primitive scene. And the New York events have
>>  radicalized the relation of images to reality, in the same way as they
>have
>>  radicalized the global situation. While before we dealt with an unbroken
>>  abundance of banal images and an uninterrupted flow of spurious events,
>the
>>  terrorist attack in New York has resurrected both the image and the event.
>>
>>  Among the other weapons of the system which they have co-opted against it,
>>  terrorists have exploited the real time of images (not clear here if it is
>>  real duration, real time or images in real time), their instantaneous
>global
>>  diffusion. They have appropriated it in the same way as they have
>>  appropriated financial speculation, electronic information or air traffic.
>>  The role of images is highly ambiguous. For they capture the event (take
>it
>>  as hostage) at the same time as they glorify it. They can be infinitely
>>  multiplied, and at the same time act as a diversion and a neutralization
>(as
>>  happened for the events of May 68). One always forgets that when one
>speaks
>>  of the "danger" of the media. The image consumes the event, that is, it
>>  absorbs the latter and gives it back as consumer goods. Certainly the
>image
>>  gives to the event an unprecedented impact, but as an image-event.
>>
>>  What happens then to the real event, if everywhere the image, the fiction,
>>  the virtual, infuses reality? In this present case, one might perceive
>>  (maybe with a certain relief) a resurgence of the real, and of the
>violence
>>  of the real, in a supposedly virtual universe. "This is the end of all
>your
>>  virtual stories, - that is real!" Similarly, one could perceive a
>>  resurrection of history after its proclaimed death. But does reality
>really
>>  prevail over fiction? If it seems so, it is because reality has absorbed
>the
>>  energy of fiction, and become fiction itself. One could almost say that
>>  reality is jealous of fiction, that the real is jealous of the image... It
>>  is as if they duel, to find which is the most unimaginable.
>>
>>  The collapse of the towers of the World Trade Center is unimaginable, but
>>  that is not enough to make it a real event. A surplus of violence is not
>>  enough to open up reality. For reality is a principle, and this principle
>is
>>  lost. Real and fiction are inextricable, and the fascination of the attack
>>  is foremost the fascination by the image (the consequences, whether
>>  catastrophic or leading to jubilation are themselves mostly imaginary).
>>
>>  It is therefore a case where the real is added to the image as a terror
>>  bonus, as yet another thrill. It is not only terrifying, it is even real.
>It
>>  is not the violence of the real that is first there, with the added thrill
>>  of the image; rather the image is there first, with the added thrill of
>the
>>  real. It is something like a prize fiction, a fiction beyond fiction.
>>  Ballard (after Borges) was thus speaking of reinventing the real as the
>>  ultimate, and most redoubtable, fiction.
>>
>>  This terrorist violence is not then reality backfiring, no more than it is
>>  history backfiring. This terrorist violence is not "real". It is worse in
>a
>>  way: it is symbolic. Violence in itself can be perfectly banal and
>>  innocuous. Only symbolic violence generates singularity. And in this
>>  singular event, in this disaster movie of Manhattan, the two elements that
>>  fascinate 20th century masses are joined: the white magic of movies and
>the
>>  black magic of terrorism.
>>
>>  One tries after the event to assign to the latter any meaning, to find any
>>  possible interpretation. But there is none possible, and it is only the
>>  radicality of the spectacle, the brutality of the spectacle that is
>original
>>  and irreducible. The spectacle of terrorism imposes the terrorism of the
>>  spectacle. And against this immoral fascination (even if it engenders a
>>  universal moral reaction) the political order can do nothing. This is our
>>  theatre of cruelty, the only one left to us, -extraordinary because it
>>  unites the most spectacular to the most provocative. It is both the
>sublime
>>  micro-model of a nucleus of real violence with maximal resonance - thus
>the
>>  purest form of the spectacular, and the sacrificial model that opposes to
>>  historical and political order the purest symbolic form of challenge.
>>
>>  Any slaughter would be forgiven them if it had a meaning, if it could be
>>  interpreted as historical violence - this is the moral axiom of
>permissible
>>  violence. Any violence would be forgiven them if it were not broadcast by
>>  media ("Terrorism would be nothing without the media"). But all that is
>>  illusory. There is no good usage of the media, the media are part of the
>>  event, they are part of the terror and they are part of the game in one
>way
>>  or another.
>>
>>  Repressive actions travel the same unpredictable spiral as terrorist
>actions
>>  - none can know where it may stop, and what reversals may follow. At the
>>  level of the image and information, there are no possible distinctions
>>  between the spectacular and the symbolic, between "crime" and repression.
>>  And this uncontrollable unraveling of reversibility is the true victory of
>>  terrorism. It is a victory visible in the underground and extensive
>>  ramifications of the event - not only in direct, economic, political,
>market
>>  and financial recessions for the whole system, and in the moral and
>>  psychological regression that follows; but also in the regression of the
>>  value system, of all the ideology of freedom and free movement etc... that
>>  the Western world is so proud of, and that legitimates in its eyes its
>power
>>  over the rest of the world.
>>
>>  Already, the idea of freedom, a new and recent (sic) idea, is being erased
>>  from everyday lives and consciousness, and liberal globalization is being
>>  realized as its exact reverse: a 'Law and Order' globalization, a total
>>  control, a policing terror. Deregulation ends in maximal constraints and
>>  restrictions, equal to those in a fundamentalist society.
>>
>>  Production, consumption, speculation and growth slowdowns (but not of
>course
>>  corruption!): everything indicates a strategic retreat of the global
>system,
>>  a heart-rending revision of its values, a regulation forced by absolute
>>  disorder, but one the system imposes on itself, internalizing its own
>>  defeat. It seems a defensive reaction to terrorism impact, but it might in
>>  fact respond to secret injunctions.
>>
>>  Another side to terrorist victory is that all other forms of violence and
>>  destabilization of order favor it: Internet terrorism, biological
>terrorism,
>>  anthrax terrorism and the terrorism of the rumor, all are assigned to Ben
>>  Laden. He could even claim natural disasters. Every form of
>disorganization
>>  and perverse exchange benefits him. The structure of generalized global
>>  exchange itself favors impossible exchange. It is a form of terrorist
>>  automatic writing, constantly fed by the involuntary terrorism of the
>news.
>>  With all its consequent panics: if, in that anthrax story, intoxication
>>  happens by itself, by instantaneous crystallization, like a chemical
>>  solution reacting to the contact of a molecule, it is because the system
>has
>>  reached the critical mass that makes it vulnerable to any aggression.
>>
>>  There is no solution to this extreme situation, especially not war that
>>  offers only an experience of deja-vu, with the same flooding of military
>>  forces, fantastic news, useless propaganda, deceitful and pathetic
>>  discourses and technological deployment. In other words, as in the Gulf
>War,
>>  a non-event, an event that did not happen...
>>
>>  There is its raison d'etre: to substitute to a real and formidable, unique
>>  and unforeseeable event, a repetitive and deja-vu pseudo-event. The
>  terrorist attack corresponded to a primacy of the event over every model
>of
>  interpretation. Conversely, this stupidly military and technological war
>  corresponds to a primacy of the model over the event, that is to
>fictitious
>  stakes and to a non-sequitur. War extends/continues the absence at the
>heart
>  of politics through other means.

   

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