142 lines
8.3 KiB
Plaintext
142 lines
8.3 KiB
Plaintext
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Ideology in Material Form
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Self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself, in that, and by the
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fact that it exists for another self-consciousness; that is to say, it is
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only by being acknowledged or "recognized."
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Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind
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212
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Ideology is the foundation of the thought of a class society within the
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conflictual course of history. Ideological entities have never been mere
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fictions -- rather, they are a distorted consciousness of reality, and, as
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such, real factors retroactively producing real distorting effects; which is
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all the more reason why that materialization of ideology, in the form of the
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spectacle, which is precipitated by the concrete success of an autonomous
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economic system of production, results in the virtual identification with
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social reality itself of an ideology that manages to remold the whole of the
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real to its own specifications.
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213
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Once ideology, which is the abstract will to universality and the illusion
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thereof, finds itself legitimated in modern society by universal abstraction
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and by the effective dictatorship of illusion, then it is no longer the
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voluntaristic struggle of the fragmentary, but rather its triumph. The claims
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of ideology now take on a sort of flat, positivistic exactness: ideology is
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no longer a historical choice, but simply an assertion of the obvious. Names
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of particular ideologies have vanished. The portion of properly ideological
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labor serving the system may no longer be conceived of other than in terms of
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an "epistemological base" supposedly transcending all specific ideological
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phenomena. Ideology in material form is itself without a name, just as it is
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without a formulable historical agenda. Which is another way of saying that
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the history of ideologies, plural, is over.
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214
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Ideology, whose whole internal logic led toward what Mannheim calls "total
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ideology" -- the despotism of a fragment imposing itself as the
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pseudo-knowledge of a frozen whole, as a totalitarian worldview -- has now
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fulfilled itself in the immobilized spectacle of non-history. Its fulfillment
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is also its dissolution into society as a whole. Come the practical
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dissolution of that society itself, ideology -- the last unreason standing in
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the way of historical life -- must likewise disappear.
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215
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The spectacle is the acme of ideology, for in its full flower it exposes and
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manifests the essence of all ideological systems: the impoverishment,
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enslavement and negation of real life. Materially, the spectacle is "the
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expression of estrangement, of alienation between man and man." The "new
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potentiality of fraud" concentrated within it has its basis in that form of
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production whereby "with the mass of objects grows the mass of alien powers
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to which man is subjected." This is the supreme stage of an expansion that
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has turned need against life. "The need for money is for that reason the real
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need created by the modern economic system, and the only need it creates" (
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Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts). The principle which Hegel enunciated
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in the Jenenser Realphilosophie as that of money -- "the life, moving of
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itself, of that which is dead" -- has now been extended by the spectacle to
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the entirety of social life.
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216
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In contrast to the project outlined in the Theses on Feuerbach -- the
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realization of philosophy in a praxis transcending the opposition between
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idealism and materialism -- the spectacle preserves the ideological features
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of both materialism and idealism, imposing them in the pseudo-concreteness of
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its universe. The contemplative aspect of the old materialism, which
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conceives of the world as representation, not as activity -- and which in the
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last reckoning idealizes matter -- has found fulfillment in the spectacle,
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where concrete things are automatically masters of social life.
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Correlatively, idealism's imaginary activity likewise finds its fulfillment
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in the spectacle, this through the technical mediation of signs and signals
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-- which in the last reckoning endow an abstract ideal with material form.
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217
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The parallel between ideology and schizophrenia drawn by Joseph Gabel in his
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False Consciousness should be seen in the context of this economic process of
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materialization of ideology. What ideology already was, society has now
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become. A blocked practice and its corollary, an antidialectical false
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consciousness, are imposed at every moment on an everyday life in thrall to
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the spectacle -- an everyday life that should be understood as the systematic
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organization of a breakdown in the faculty of encounter, and the replacement
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of that faculty by a social hallucination: a false consciousness of
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encounter, or an "illusion of encounter." In a society where no one is any
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longer recognizable by anyone else, each individual is necessarily unable to
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recognize his own reality. Here ideology is at home; here separation has
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built its world.
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218
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In clinical pictures of schizophrenia, according to Gabel, "a degradation of
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the dialectic of the totality (of which dissociation is the extreme form) and
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a degradation in the dialectic of becoming (of which catatonia is the extreme
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form) seem to be intimately interwoven." Imprisoned in a flat universe
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bounded on all sides by the spectacle's screen, the consciousness of the
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spectactor has only figmentary interlocutors which subject it to a one-way
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discourse on their commodities and the politics of those commodities. The
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sole mirror of this consciousness is the spectacle in all its breadth, where
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what is staged is a false way out of a generalized autism.
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219
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The spectacle erases the dividing line between self and world, in that the
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self, under siege by the presence/absence of the world, is eventually
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overwhelmed; it likewise erases the dividing line between true and false,
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repressing all directly lived truth beneath the real presence of the
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falsehood maintained by the organization of appearances. The individual,
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though condemned to the passive acceptance of an alien everyday reality, is
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thus driven into a form of madness in which, by resorting to magical devices,
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he entertains the illusion that he is reacting to this fate. The recognition
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and consumption of commodities are at the core of this pseudo-response to a
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communication to which no response is possible. The need to imitate that the
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consumer experiences is indeed a truly infantile need, one determined by
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every aspect of his fundamental dispossession. In terms used by Gabel to
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describe quite another level of pathology, "the abnormal need for
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representation here compensates for a torturing feeling of being at the
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margin of existence."
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220
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Whereas the logic of false consciousness cannot accede to any genuine
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self-knowledge, the quest for the critical truth of the spectacle must also
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be a true critique. This quest calls for commitment to a practical struggle
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alongside the spectacle's irreconcilable enemies, as well as a readiness to
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withhold commitment where those enemies are not active. By eagerly embracing
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the machinations of reformism or making common cause with
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pseudo-revolutionary dregs, those driven by the abstract wish for immediate
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efficacity obey only the laws of the dominant forms of thought, and adopt the
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exclusive viewpoint of actuality. In this way delusion is able to reemerge
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within the camp of its erstwhile opponents. The fact is that a critique
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capable of surpassing the spectacle must know how to bide its time.
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221
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Self emancipation in our time is emancipation from the material bases of an
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inverted truth. This "historic mission to establish truth in the world" can
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be carried out neither by the isolated individual nor by atomized and
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manipulated masses, but -- only and always -- by that class which is able to
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effect the dissolution of all classes, subjecting all power to the
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disalienating form of a realized democracy -- to councils in which practical
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theory exercises control over itself and surveys its own action. It cannot be
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carried out, in other words, until individuals are "directly bound to
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universal history"; until dialogue has taken up arms to impose its own
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conditions upon the world.
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From the Society of the Spectacle, by Guy Debord
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