Ž: We should follow T.J. Clark in his rejection of the eschatological notion of future, which Marxism inherited from the Christian tradition, and whose most concise version is rendered by Hölderlin’s well-known lines: “Where there is danger, that which saves is also rising.” Perhaps, therein resides the lesson of the terrifying experiences of the XXth century Left, the experience which compels us to return from Marx back to Hegel, i.e., from the Marxist revolutionary eschatology back to Hegel’s tragic vision of a history which forever remains radically open since the historical process always redirects our activity into an unexpected direction. Perhaps, the Left should learn to assume fully the basic “alienation” of the historical process: we cannot control the consequences of our acts – not because we are just puppets in the hands of some secret Master or Fate which pulls the strings, but for precisely the opposite reason: there is no big Other, no agent of total accountancy who or which can take into account the consequences of our own acts. This acceptance of “alienation” in no way entails a cynical distance; it implies a fully engaged position aware of the risks involved– there is no higher historical Necessity whose instruments we are and which guarantees the final outcome of our interventions. From this standpoint, our despair at the present deadlock appears in a new light: we have to renounce the very eschatological scheme which underlies our despair: there will never be a Left magically transforming confused revolts and protests into one big consistent Project of Salvation, all we have is our activity open to all the risks of an open contingent history. Does this mean that we should simply abandon the topic (and experience) of “living in the end time,” of approaching the apocalyptic point of no return when “things cannot go on like this any longer”? That we should replace it with the happy liberal-progressive “post-metaphysical” view of modest risky but cautious pragmatic interventions? No, the thing to do is to separate apocalyptic experience from eschatology: we are now approaching a certain zero-point – ecologically, economically, socially… -, things will change, the change will be most radical if we do nothing, but there is no eschatological turn ahead pointing towards the act of global Salvation. materializmidialektik.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ziz.pdf
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 01:00:01 +0000
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