Bedeutung Issue 3 Life & Death by Bedeutung

NICK BOSTROM on THE FUTURE OF HUMAN EVOLUTION COSTAS DOUZINAS POLIS, STATE, COSMOPOLIS

MARTIN HOLBR AAD THE POWER OF POWDER CONSTANTINE TSOUCALAS CHRIS COKER

DESTE: A GLIMPSE INTO LIFE AND DEATH

BILL VIOLA TRANSFIGURATIONS SIMON CRITCHLEY JAMIESON WEBSTER HELMUT LANG JOHN COOPER MARTIN BROWNING SARAH WALLIS SVETLANA PALMER JOHN STRUTTON PETER HARRIS ALLEN RUPPERSBERG NEVILLE WAKEFIELD

2 Bedeutung

Bedeutung Magazine

Philosophy - Current Affairs - Art - Literature - Review - Analysis

Life & Death

Contents Life & Death

Masthead Contributors Editorial Nick Bostrom Michael Withey Constantine Tsoucalas Martin Holbraad Simon Critchley & Jamieson Webster Costas Douzinas Chris Coker John Cooper Keir Starmer

Bill Viola John Strutton Allen Ruppersberg Helmut Lang Neville Wakefield Nadja Argyropoulou Martin Browning Sarah Wallis & Svetlana Palmer

The Future of Human Evolution Interview - Nick Bostrom Living Dangerously, Miserably and Unconventionally The Power of Powder What is the Hole Inside the Hole Polis, State, Cosmopolis War in the 21C Assisted Suicide: The Law and Policy Decision on Prosecution: The Death by Suicide of Daniel James Transfigurations Donderslag The Secret of Life & Death Alles Gleich Schwer Interview - Helmut Lang A Glimpse into Life & Death The Burning Boy Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Diaries from WWII Endnotes

Bedeutung Editor-in-Chief & Creative Director Alexandros Stavrakas editor@bedeutung.co.uk Editor Michael Withey mw@bedeutung.co.uk Editor Thomas Presskorn-Thygesen tp@bedeutung.co.uk Art Editor John Slyce js@bedeutung.co.uk Press & Publicity Paul Secretan press@bedeutung.co.uk

Bedeutung Subscriptions: www.bedeutung.co.uk Institutional Subscriptions: subs@bedeutung.co.uk Advertisement Enquiries: ad@bedeutung.co.uk Distribution and selling points: distribution@bedeutung.co.uk Bedeutung is independently published biannually in the UK. It is not affiliated with any institution and has no political, financial or other dependencies. Although the views expressed in Bedeutung are those of their authors, the editorship endorses them and supports their publication. We would like to thank the following people for their help and support: Antonia Spiegel, Melissa Lounsbery, Kira Perov, Joakim Andreasson, Sam Thorne, Charlotte Appleyard, Caroline Boyle, Candida Gertler, Stephanie Camu, Polo Guilbert-Wright, David Crowe and, of course, Sina Najafi. Also, thanks to the interns Ishrat Kanga and Anna Leon. We thank the Outset Contemporary Art Fund for their invaluable endorsement. Special thanks go to the radiant Errikos Arones. Last, but not least, we wish to express our unreserved gratitude to this issueâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s contributors for placing their confidence and entrusting their work to our publication. Images on pp. 2, 5, 30, 78 and 94 are works by Peter Harris Image on pp. 00, 1: Bill Viola Ocean Without a Shore (2007)

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Travel Partner Raffaello Sanzio, called Raphael, EsterhĂĄzy Madonna, c.1507â&#x20AC;&#x201C;08. Tempera and oil on panel, 29 x 21.5 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. Exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest and with the partnership of the Hungarian National Gallery

Contributors Nadja Argyropoulou lives and works in Athens as an independent curator. She has worked as Director of Cultural Programming and Public Affairs of the Hellenic American Union in Athens and has been Head of the Culture and Image Dpt. of the EU Hellenic Presidency Bureau/Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She has worked as assistant curator for the Greek Pavilion during the 2005 and 2007 Venice Biennials. She is cooperating with Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art. She has written reviews for magazines and newspapers in Greece and abroad and texts for solo and group art shows. Nick Bostrom is Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. He previously taught at Yale University in the Department of Philosophy and in the Yale Institute for Social and Policy Studies. He has more than 150 publications to his name, including three scholarly books: Anthropic Bias; Global Catastrophic Risks and Enhancing Humans. His writings have been translated into 19 different languages, and reprinted numerous times in anthologies and textbooks. Bostrom developed the first mathematically explicit theory of observation selection effects. He serves occasionally as an expert consultant for various governmental agencies in the UK, Europe, and the USA, and he is a frequent commentator in the media. Chris Coker is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Adjunct Prof Staff College, Oslo. He is the author of The Future of War: the Reenchantment of War in the Twenty-First Century; Waging War without Warriors; Humane Warfare; War and the Illiberal Conscience; The Twilight of the West; War and the Twentieth Century; Britain's Defence Policy in the 1990s: an intelligent person's guide to the defence debate; A Nation in Retreat; Reflections on American Foreign Policy and in a previous incarnation many publications on South Africa and African security. John Cooper was born in Wolverhampton in the West Midlands. He attended Regis Comprehensive School and achieved a Law Degree from Newcastle University in 1980. He was the Butterworths Law Prizeman. Called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1983 and the Australian Bar in 1989, he spent a period of time with one of the world's leading Law Firms, Clifford Chance in London. He is now recognised as being one of the leading barristers in London. His writing work spans television, theatre, academic, journalism and leading text books, with a Broadcasting career including a six part Channel 4 series Teens on Trial. Simon Critchley works in continental philosophy, history of philosophy, literature, ethics and politics. After a position as University Fellow at Cardiff University, Critchley

was appointed Lecturer in Philosophy at Essex in 1989, where he became Reader in 1995 and Professor in 1999. Also at the University of Essex, he was Director of the Centre for Theoretical Studies and collaborated closely with Ernesto Laclau. Critchley was President of the British Society for Phenomenology from 1994-99. Between 1998-2004, Critchley was a Programme Director of the Collège International de Philosophie, Paris. Since 2004 he has been Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research, New York. From 2009, he will be part-time Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tilburg.

Costas Douzinas is Professor of Law, Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities and Pro-Vice Chancellor at Birkbeck College, University of London. Educated in Athens, London and Strasbourg, Costas has taught at the Universities of Middlesex, Lancaster, Prague, Athens, Griffith, Nanjing and Melbourne where he is a Professorial Fellow. He is a founding member of the Critical Legal Conference; managing editor of Law and Critique: The International Journal of Critical Legal Thought; managing director of the publishing house Birkbeck Law Press. William Flesch is Professor of English and American Literature at Brandeis University. His publications are: Comeuppance; Generosity and the Limits of Authority: Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton and his articles include: Critical Inquiry; Studies in Romanticism and Responses: On Paul de Man's Wartime Journalism, Werner Hamather, ed. and articles in Southwest Review. Peter Harris was born in Portsmouth in 1967, and studied at Chelsea College of Art before co-founding Uncle Grey Presents in 1996 in East London. Harris uses painting, photography and film to explore self-portraiture in new ways, often through collaboration. He has worked with the NatWest debt collection department, his DHSS officers, Tony Hart, Ken Russell, Rolf Harris, Steve Coogan and Boris Johnson as well as musicians Siouxie Sioux, David Bowie, The Stranglers, The London Menonnite Choir and Lee‘Scratch’Perry. Martin Holbraad teaches anthropology at University College London and does ethnographic research on Afro-Cuban religion and the cosmology of socialism in Havana. He has coedited two volumes on the theorisation of artefacts in anthropology - Thinking Through Things (Routledge 2007) and Technologies of the Imagination (Ethnos, Special Issue, 2009) - and his monograph titled Cuban Divination and Anthropological Truth is in preparation. Svetlana Palmer was born in Moscow in 1969. She studied in Moscow, Berlin and London and has lived

Contributors in Britain since 1990. She has worked as a researcher and producer on major historical documentary series including Bafta-nominated BBC/CNN series The Cold War; ITV’s award-winning The Second World War In Colour and Channel 4’s critically acclaimed The First World War. Sarah and Svetlana’s previous book is A War In Words - Diaries and Letters from the First World War. This is their second book.

Allen Ruppersberg was born in 1944 in Cleveland, Ohio and attended art school in Los Angeles in the late 1960s, where he joined other artists experimenting with conceptual approaches. It was then his interest in the interplay between image and text took shape, along with a desire to explore the rift between so–called high and low culture. His Bedeutung artist’s pages reproduces the cover and a partial text from The Secret of Life and Death, 1977 which appeared originally on pages 77 to 83 of his 1985 catalogue The Secret of Life and Death published by MOCA, Los Angeles and Black Sparrow Press. "I think the copy is the truth too", Ruppersberg has explained. Elfie Semotan graduated from Austrian Fashion School Of Design in 1960, then discovered photography in Paris, where she was modelling. Back to Vienna in 1969, she began working as a professional photographer, doing fashion, advertising and portraits, becoming Austria’s most famous photographer. She then worked on an international level for magazines such as Vogue, Elle, Esquire, Interview, ID, Harper’s Bazaar, Allure, Marie Claire, The New Yorker and many more. She moved to NYC in 1994, where she pursued her career, as well as developing personal exhibitions projects. She has been married to artists Kurt Kocherscheidt and Martin Kippenberger, with whom she collaborated, as well as with longtime friend Helmut Lang. She has two sons, and now lives and works in New York, Vienna, and Jennersdorf. Keir Starmer QC is a barrister in England and Wales. Since November 2008, he is the Director of Public Prosecutions and the sixth head of the Crown Prosecution Service. John Strutton was born in Bedfordshire in 1966. He received an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in 1998. In 1999 he formed the performance group The Band of Nod and from 2003 till 2008 he ran and directed, with the artist Alan Miller, the project space 39. Since 2005 he has been writing and performing with the band Arthur Brick. He has recently exhibited in Parkhaus at Kunsthalle Dusseldorf and Precious Things at Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, Ireland as well as performing with The Band of Nod at Camden Arts Centre, Reading Festival and Tate Britain. `

Constantine Tsoucalas was born in Athens in 1937. He studied in Athens, France, Germany and the United States. He is emeritus professor of Sociology at the University of Athens. Bill Viola is considered a pioneer in the medium of video art and is internationally recognized as one of today’s leading artists. Viola received his BFA in Experimental Studies from Syracuse University, New York, in 1973 and for 38 years he has created videotapes, architectural video installations, sound environments, electronic music performances, flat panel video pieces, and single channel videotapes that have been shown in museums and galleries worldwide and are found in many distinguished collections. Neville Wakefield is a writer and commentator on contemporary art, culture and photography. He currently is a senior curatorial advisor for PS1 MoMA and the curator of Frieze Projects at the Frieze Art Fair. He is also the creative director of Tar magazine. Neville recently organized the celebration of designer Adam Kimmel at Pitti Immagine Uomo held in Florence. He collaborated as the guest editor with W Magazine on their annual Arts Edition, November 2007 and again for the 2008 edition. He is a cofounder and coproducer of Destricted, a series of films that address the issue of sexuality in art. Neville recently co-curated Helmut Lang–Alles Gleich Schwer, staged at Hanover’s Kestnergesellschaft. Sarah Wallis was born in America and moved to Britain as a child. She finished her degree in Russian and German the year the Berlin Wall came down and put her linguistic skills to use working as a researcher and producer on documentary films in a Europe without the iron curtain. Sarah has worked on several major historical documentaries including the BBC series People’s Century, for which the episode Master Race won an international Emmy; the RTS award-winning Homecoming, a film following the return of Alexander Solzhenitsyn to Russia, and the Channel Four series The First World War. Bruce Weber is one of the most prominent and prolific American fashion photographers, born 1946 in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. He is widely known for his campaigns for Calvin Klein, Abercrombie & Fitch, Gianni Versace and Ralph Lauren. He has collaborated with Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, Elle, Life, Interview and Rolling Stone magazines, amongst others. Jamieson Webster is a practicing psychoanalyst. She is a Fellow at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and teaches psychoanalytic theory at the New School.

EDITORIAL

ocieties imagine and create their institutions based on needs, values and ideas that are fictitious, meaning they are based on arbitrary truths (about what is right, good, moral etc). An ‘autonomous’ society is one that willfully acknowledges the arbitrariness of those truths. What this essentially means is that such a society recognises itself as its creator, sees the logic behind and purpose of its institutions, knows how and why it came about and towards what future it strives. The Age of Reason dissolved some of the old dependencies and created an idea of humanism very different from the present atheistic version of it. At the core of this emancipation was not some quasi-scientific belief that humans are animals whose lives and behaviours are governed by insuperable Laws, but that humans are themselves regulators of the world they inhabit, capable of shifting the winds to fit their ideas and aspirations. It was an effort to create the ultimate autonomous society. The results are all too well-known.

The ideological projects that began in Europe in the late eighteenth century (French Revolution), found their culmination in early twentieth century (Russian Revolution) and saw their incontrovertible collapse some twenty years ago may have been less that successful in bringing about the world they envisaged. Their significance, however, should not be measured by the rate of their success, nor wagered against the misery that they generated in their unfolding, profound as both might have been. These projects are notable in their unashamed claim that man is alone and that it is man alone who can change his condition. Not Gods; nor genes or memes. The philosopher John Gray, a nihilist of the deepest dye, will have us think that belief in progress is a trick our mind is playing on us, possibly a memetic remnant of our Christian past. Instead of hallucinating about transforming our world, he claims with tragic futility, we should capitulate to our ephemerality and rapacious animality, lest we start resembling the naïve ideologues of the past. This sort of passivity, premised on an assortment of quasi-scientific and quasi-philosophical ruminations nurtures the quintessential anti-citizen: a self-absorbed individual whose main–if not only–concern is his physical and spiritual betterment, as much withdrawn from collective matters as possible. And yet, it is precisely through participation in a process of a self-relating truth that we can gain access to our immortality, obviously not in the sense of transgressing our corporeal mortality which seems to be an age-long obsession, but in the sense of experiencing and participating in a dimension of immortality in our very lives. Living in relation to subjectivised truths opens up the possibility of transgressing mere survival (meant as an existence condemned to its unbearable finitude) and extends the pos¬sibilities of autonomy. This creative work cannot be but political and politicised. The collapse of explicit ideological narratives and, subsequently, the absence of politics that articulate a specific idea and plan about where societies should go has created an enormous existential void. With no Gods or Party, nor gospel or manifesto to tell us any¬thing about our origin or our destination, we seem to be inhabiting a world where political, economic and

12 Bedeutung

EDITORIAL

social phenomena are driven by themselves, governed by the logic that things are just because they are and that they cannot be any other way but that. Blindly following prescriptions of rationality has become the definitive ideological mantra of our time. The Gulf onslaughts were substantiated not by political objectives based on ideas or visions, but by the algorithmic processing of what was presented as objective knowledge, ‘intelligence’. When the data proved downright doctored, moral (and, largely, legal) agency disappeared, simply because there was no agent to assume it. In the case of environmentalism, the discussion about what world we want has, again, been trumped by the urgency of quickly and without much dithering acting on the available science. The recent financial crises have been dealt with in the same fashion: the opportunity for reflection on the national and global circumstances that pro¬duce such degenerative conditions has been irretrievably hijacked by a hysteric effort to cover up the effects by applying cures that are presented as ineluctable in their own self-proclaimed 'objectivity'. By depending on objective truths (truths measured merely by their factual accuracy) that are not internalised and towards which we are disengaged, we are giving up on any possibility of emancipation and autonomy, we are relinquishing the prospect of any meaningful life and we are condemning ourselves to a wretched hedonist (if even so) survival, deprived of any desire proper. Man is split between, on the one hand, avoiding death and, on the other, avoiding a life devoid of anything that would make it worth living. As Castoriadis pointed out, this is our tragic knowledge: that nothing is worth as much as life; but if nothing is worth more than life, then life isn’t worth anything. To break out of this vicious circle, subjectivity must be reinvented. This is no time for selfimportant and sterile agitation. To do away with a sense of helplessness that seems endemic in Western liberal societies, requires that we engage in envisaging a future for our societies and we articulate those visions based on needs and desires that we recognise as ours and we see as capable of instigating a universality. This will inevitably render us answerable. But, if there is a way out of a miserable individualistic survival and into what one might call a ‘real’ life, it is through a process of collectivisation that stems from personal engagement to a fully lived truth. Nothing is insurmountable. No Gods, no genes, no memes.

Alexandros Stavrakas Athens, August 2010

Life & Death 13

Philosophy.

THE FUTURE

of H U M A N EVOLUTION

Nick Bostrom

The Panglossian View

Can we trust evolutionary development to take our species in broadly desirable directions? Starting from primitive, unconscious life, biological evolution has led to the development of ever more advanced organisms, including creatures that have minds, consciousness, language, and reason. More recently, cultural and technological development, which exhibit some parallels with biological evolution, has enabled our species to progress at a vastly accelerated pace. The past few hundred years have seen enormous improvements in human life-span, labour productivity, scientific knowledge, and social and political organisation, which have enabled billions of people to enjoy unprecedented opportunities for enjoyment and personal development. On a historical, as well as on a geological timescale, the big picture shows an overarching trend towards increasing levels of complexity, knowledge, consciousness, and coordinated goal-directed organisation, a trend which, not to put too fine a point on it, we may label “progress”. 1

What we shall call the Panglossian view maintains that this past record of success gives us good grounds for thinking that evolution (whether biological, memetic, or technological) will continue to lead in desirable directions. This Panglossian view, however, can be criticised on at least two grounds. Firstly, because we have no reason to think that all this past progress was in any sense inevitable; much of it may, for aught we know, have been due to luck. And secondly, because even if the past progress were to some extent inevitable, there is no guarantee that the melioristic trend will continue into the indefinite future. The first objection derives some degree of support from the consideration that an observation selection effect is operating to filter the evidence we can have about the success of our own evolutionary development.2 Suppose it were true that on 99.9% of all planets where life emerged, it went extinct before developing to the point where intelligent observers could begin to ponder their origin. If this were the case, what should we expect to observe? Answer: something similar to what we do in fact observe. Clearly, the hypothesis that the odds of intelligent life developing on a given planet are low does not predict that we should find ourselves on a planet where life went extinct at an early stage. Instead, it predicts that we should find ourselves on a planet where intelligent life evolved, even if such planets constitute a very small fraction of all planets where primitive life evolved. The long track record of life’s success in our evolutionary past, which one may

naïvely take to support the hypothesis that life’s prospects are in general good and that there is something approaching inevitably in the rise of higher organisms from simple replicators, turns out, after reflecting on the overwhelming observation selection effect filtering the possible evidence we could have, not to offer any such support at all, because this is the very same evidence that we should expect to have had if the optimistic hypothesis were false. A much more careful examination of the details of our evolutionary history would be needed to circumvent this selection effect. Such an examination is beyond the scope of the present paper.3

This paper will, instead, focus on the second objection to the Panglossian view. Even if the rise of intelligent life from simple replicators were a robust and nearly inevitable process, this would not give us strong grounds for thinking that the good trend will continue. One possibility, of course, is that a catastrophic event may cause the sudden extinction of the human species. Some existential risks arise from nature, e.g. impact hazards (meteors and asteroids), pandemics, astrophysical disasters, and supervolcano eruptions. But the greatest existential risks are anthropogenic and arise from present or anticipated future technological developments. Destructive uses of advanced molecular nanotechnology, designer pathogens, future nuclear arms races, high-energy physics experiments, and self-enhancing AI with an ill-conceived goal system are among the worrisome prospects that could cause the human world to end in a bang. Here, however, we shall explore a different set of existential risks in which the world would end more gradually, not with a bang but a whimper.4 Let us therefore suppose that no sudden cataclysm puts an end to life. Let us also set aside scenarios in which evolution leads to the erosion of complexity. We shall explore how, even if evolutionary development continues unabated in the direction of greater complexity, things could, nevertheless, take a wrong turn leading to the disappearance of all the things we value. This paper will not claim that this is what will happen. The aim, rather, is to undermine our confidence in the Panglossian view and to suggest that a more agnostic stance better reflects the available evidence. I shall examine a couple of scenarios in which freewheeling evolutionary developments take us in undesirable directions, and I shall argue that if the future evolutionary fitness landscape is such as to make these evolutionary courses the default (and we have no strong reason either for or against this assumption), then the only way we could avoid longPhilosophy 17

term existential disaster is by taking control of our own evolution. Doing this, I shall further argue, would require the development of a “singleton,” a world order in which at the highest level of organisation there is only one independent decision-making power (which may be, but need not be, a world government). 5 Two Dystopian “Upward” Evolutionary Scenarios

In this section we will consider two scenarios in which human evolution, potentiated by the advanced technology, leads in directions that we should regard as highly undesirable. Scenario I: The Mindless Outsourcers

Technological progress continues to accelerate and at some point the technology of “mind uploading” becomes possible.6 Some human individuals upload and make many copies of themselves. Meanwhile, there is gradual progress in neuroscience and artificial intelligence, and eventually it becomes possible to isolate individual cognitive modules and connect them up to modules from other uploaded minds. Possibly, modules would need to be trained before they can communicate with each other effectively. Modules that conform to a common standard would be better able to communicate and cooperate with other modules and would therefore be economically more productive, creating a pressure for standardisation. There might be multiple standards; some modules might specialise in translating between incompatible standards. Competitive uploads begin outsourcing increasing portions of their functionality: “Why do I need to know arithmetic when I can buy time on Arithmetic-Modules Inc. whenever I need to do my accounts? Why do I need to be good with language when I can hire a professional language module to articulate my thoughts? Why do I need to bother with making decisions about my personal life when there are certified executive-modules that can scan my goal structure and manage my assets so as best to fulfil my goals?” Some uploads might prefer to retain most of their functionality and handle tasks themselves that could be more efficiently done by others. They would be like hobbyists who enjoy growing their own vegetables or knitting their own cardigans; but they would be less efficient than some other uploads, and they would consequently be outcompeted over time. It is possible that optimum efficiency will be attained by grouping abilities in aggregates that are roughly human-equivalent. It might be the case, for example, that a math-module must be tailored to fit the language-module, and that both must be tailored to fit the executivemodule, in order for all three to be able to work 18 Bedeutung

together effectively. Standardisation might be almost completely unworkable. But it is hard to see any compelling reason for being confident that this is so. For aught we know, human-type minds may be optimal only given the constraints of human neurology. When it becomes possible to copy modules at will, to send highbandwidth signals between parts of different brains, and to build architectures that cannot readily be implemented on biological neural nets, it might turn out that the optima relative to this new constraints-landscape have shifted away from the human-like mind region. There might be no niche for mental architectures of a human kind.7

There might be ecological niches for complexes that are either less complex (such as individual modules), more complex (such as vast colonies of modules), or of similar complexity as human minds but with radically different architectures. Would these complexes be worthwhile from our current point of view? Do we, upon reflection, really favour a world in which such alien types of complexes have replaced human-type complexes?

The answer may depend on the precise nature of those alien complexes. The present world contains many levels of organisation. Some highly complex entities such as multinational corporations and nation states contain human beings as constituents. Yet we usually assign these highlevel complexes only instrumental value. Corporations and states do not (it is generally assumed) themselves have consciousness, over and above the consciousness of the people who constitute them; they cannot feel phenomenal pain or pleasure. We think they are of value only to the extent that they serve human needs. In cases where they do not contribute to the welfare of any sentient creature, we “kill” them without compunction.8 There are also lower levels of organisation in today’s world, and the entities inhabiting these levels are not accorded significant moral value either. We do not think it is wrong to erase a piece of computer code. Nor do we think that a neurosurgeon is harming anyone when she extirpates a module (maybe containing an epileptic centre) from a human brain if the operation helps the remaining parts of the brain to function better. As for alien forms of complexes of the same complexity as a human brain, most of us would assign them value only if we thought that they had a capacity for conscious experience. We can, thus, imagine a technologically highly advanced society, containing many sorts of complex structures, some of which are much smarter and more intricate than anything that exists

today, in which there would nevertheless be a complete absence of any type of being whose welfare has moral significance. In a sense, this would be an uninhabited society. All the kinds of being that we care even remotely about would have vanished.

What would make such a world valueless is not the fact that machines would have replaced biological humans. Whether a mind is implemented on biological neurons or on silicon processors seems to make no fundamental moral difference. Rather, the catastrophe would be that such a world would not contain even the right kind of machines, i.e. ones that are conscious and whose welfare matters. There may be an abundance of economic wealth and technological capability in such a world, yet it would be of no avail because there would be nobody there to benefit from it. Scenario II: All-Work-And-No-Fun

Even if we do not suppose that uploading and outsourcing will result in a widespread loss of consciousness, we can still entertain the possibility that intrinsically valuable activities and states of consciousness become rarer or disappear altogether. Much of human life’s meaning arguably depends on the enjoyment, for its own sake, of humour, love, game-playing, art, sex, dancing, social conversation, philosophy, literature, scientific discovery, food and drink, friendship, parenting, and sport. We have preferences and capabilities that make us engage in such activities, and these predispositions were adaptive in our species’ evolutionary past; but what ground do we have for being confident that these or similar activities will continue to be adaptive in the future? Perhaps what will maximise fitness in the future will be nothing but non-stop highintensity drudgery, work of a drab and repetitive nature, aimed at improving the eighth decimal of some economic output measure. Even if the workers selected for in this scenario were conscious, the resulting world would still be radically impoverished in terms of the qualities that give value to life.

To see why these evolutionary scenarios are not quite as improbable as they might appear, we shall consider briefly how we got to where we are today, and whether the factors that led to the evolution of both consciousness and interesting activities will necessarily continue to promote these valuable phenomena, or whether they might instead reflect a transient phase in the history of intelligent life. Ours is an Evolutionary Disequilibrium

If you wanted to maximise the number of your

offspring, your best strategy would probably be to donate as much sperm to sperm banks as you can if you are male, or to become an egg donor if you are female. Most of us do not do this because most of us happen not to have any great desire for reproductive success abstractly conceived. Especially in developed countries, couples often choose to have far fewer children than the maximum they could support, and welfare programs would ensure the survival of any number of children that a couple could not support. Human nature is in an evolutionary disequilibrium; our evolved dispositions are not adapted to the contemporary fitness landscape and do not maximise the inclusive fitness of current individuals.9 If technology and social organisation were magically frozen in their present state, the human species would likely evolve preferences that more fully reflected the modern fitness function. This could happen by our developing a direct preference for reproductive success (as contrasted to preferences for sex, child rearing, etc.). Alternatively, we might develop a strong instinctual aversion to the use of birth control. It is also possible that cultural evolution would act faster than biological evolution, producing a dominant meme set favouring plentiful offspring and opposing all forms of birth control.10

Population growth is limited not only by our relative lack of interest in having children but also by the biology of human reproduction and maturation. Couples can only produce about one child per year and it takes a newborn about a decade and a half to reach sexual maturity. Even these physiological inhibitors of population growth may be reduced. While biological evolution could probably reduce the duration of human pregnancy and time to puberty to some extent, much more radical effects could result from technological developments. Uploads (and artificial intelligences) could reproduce virtually instantaneously. Moreover, since their “offspring” (copies) would be identical to the original, they would have no maturational latency. Population growth in an upload population could be rapidly exponential, with a potential doubling time of days or less. The current unprecedented level of average global income is the result of the fact that, for a long time, the world economy has been growing faster than world population. Average income can only rise if economic growth exceeds population growth. If and when the motivational and physiological impediments to population growth are reduced, population growth rate would start accelerating, potentially reaching “near infinity” when uploading becomes possi-

Philosophy 19

ble. Economic growth would be unable to keep up with population growth in a population of freely reproducing uploads. If a welfare program sought to guarantee a minimum income for uploads while permitting unlimited reproduction, it would very quickly go bankrupt even given stellar economic growth rates.11 If social limitations were not imposed on reproduction, resource constraints would kick in and drive average income down to a level that made frequent reproduction impossible.12

These reflections warn us against naïvely importing intuitions about the current state of affairs into our thinking about the future. Malthusian pessimism might appear to have been refuted by the history of the last two hundred years. 13 Living conditions have been improving even in the absence of population control, contrary to Malthus’s notorious prediction. This anomaly, however, is explained by the factors mentioned above: our preferences not being in an evolutionary equilibrium and the slowness of human reproduction. If further evolutionary or technological developments were to remove these inhibiting factors, population growth rates could easily come to exceed economic growth, ushering in a Malthusian era where average income hovers close to subsistence level. With unconstrained upload reproduction, this transition could happen almost instantaneously. Costly Signalling and Flamboyant Display?

We do many things which are not in a narrow sense instrumentally useful: we dance, joke, write poetry, throw parties, go on vacations, dress up in expensive fashionable clothing, watch and participate in sports, and so on. That we are currently in an evolutionary disequilibrium does not account for this: even our Pleistocene ancestors exhibited many of these “useless” behaviours. Moreover, such behaviours are not confined to humans: [Flamboyant displays] appear in a variety of contexts, ranging from sexual selection contests in the animal world, to prestige contests among members of contemporary nation states that span continents with huge road-systems, and even land people on the Moon.14

An evolutionary explanation for the existence of such behaviours is that they function as hard-tofake signals of important qualities that are difficult to observe directly, such as bodily or mental fitness, social status, quality of allies, ability and willingness to prevail in a fight, or possession of resources. Not only behaviour but morphology,

too, can serve as a signal, the peacock’s tail being a paradigm example. An extravagant tail is a handicap that only fit peacocks can afford, and peahens have evolved to be sexually attracted by such tails because they are indicators of genetic fitness.15

Given that flamboyant display is so common among both humans and other species, one might consider whether it would not also be part of the repertoire of technologically more mature life forms. We might hope that, even if there were to be no narrowly instrumental use for play or even for conscious minds in the future ecology of intelligent life, these features might, nonetheless, confer evolutionary advantages to their possessors by virtue of being reliable signals of other adaptive qualities. Yet, while this possibility is hard to rule out, there are several reasons for scepticism that undermine the confidence prescribed by the Panglossian view.

First, many of the flamboyant displays we find in nature are related to sexual selection.16 Yet, reproduction among technologically mature life forms may well be asexual. In particular, this is so in the uploading scenario described above.

Second, new methods of reliably communicating information about oneself might be available to technologically mature creatures, methods that do not rely on flamboyant display. Even today, professional lenders tend to rely more on ownership certificates, bank statements, and the like, than on costly displays such as designer suits and Rolex watches. In the future, it might be possible to employ auditing firms that can verify through direct inspection that a client possesses a claimed attribute. Signalling one’s qualities by such auditing may be much more efficient than signalling via flamboyant display. Such a professionally mediated signal would still be costly to fake (this is of course the essential feature that makes the signal reliable), but the signal could be much cheaper to transmit than a flamboyantly communicated one when it is truthful. Third, not all possible costly or “flamboyant” displays are ones which we should regard as intrinsically valuable:

[Costly] signalling does not only take the form of provisioning public goods that enhance group benefits. Many costly signals take the form of “waste” where expenditures do not confer any group benefit… In the American Northwest, the Kwakiutl potlatch ceremonies involved the public destruction of vast amounts of accumulated wealth in the context of chiefly competition.17

While humour, music, and poetry can plausibly

Philosophy 21

be said to enhance the intrinsic quality of human life—aside from any social benefits—it is more dubious that the same claim can be sustained with regard to the costly pursuit of fashion trends or with regard to macho posturing leading to gang violence or military bravado. Even if future intelligent life forms would use costly signalling, it remains an open question whether the signal would be intrinsically valuable: whether it would be like the nightingale’s rapturous song or more like the toad’s monosyllabic croak. Two Senses of Outcompeted

We should distinguish two different senses in which a species can be outcompeted by other life forms. In the scenarios presented in section 2, the outsourcing uploads and the all-workno-play agents were postulated to outcompete the agents that retained consciousness and hobbyist interests (we shall term the latter eudaemonic agents). One thing this could mean, is that the former types of agent gradually obtain the resources originally held by the eudaemonic agents, so that the latter eventually run out of resources and become extinct. This is the typical evolutionary outcome when one type of organism outcompetes another.

But we could, also, conceive of the case where the eudaemonic agents continue to exist indefinitely, perhaps in undiminished numbers, and are outcompeted only in the sense of comprising a steadily declining fraction of the total population of agents and of controlling an ever-decreasing fraction of the world’s total wealth. It is questionable whether the eudaemonic agents could in the long run prevent their fitness-maximising competitors from engulfing them and expropriating their property. But even if the eudaemonic agents could do this, and escape extinction, the outcome would still be a disaster because it would entail a tremendous loss of opportunity. Like a ravaging fire, the fitnessmaximisers would gobble up resources (space, sunlight, matter, etc.) that would otherwise have been used for more meaningful purposes by the eudaemonic agents. 18 Could we Control our Own Evolution?

Suppose we could foresee that one of the dystopian evolutionary scenarios described above represents the default course of development of our species. What would then be our options? One response would be to sit back and let things slide. We could bolster our passivity by contem22 Bedeutung

plating the greater evolutionary fitness of the non-eudaemonic agents: being more fit, are they not more worthy possessors of the world’s resources? While few would endorse this argument in its explicit form, it is quite possible that certain related thoughts—perhaps deference to the “natural order” or acceptance of the idea that might makes right—may have found a hiding place in the dark corners of some minds. We can expel such notions by reminding ourselves that if a doomsday plague emerged and killed all mammals, this would not imply that the pathogens’ “victory” was a good thing, even though it would mean that the plague had proven fitter.

Another response would be to lament the dystopian outcome but conclude that nothing could be done to prevent it. If outsourcing our constant toil has a higher fitness-value than eudaemonic living, does not evolution theory then entail that the eudaemonic agents will disappear? Yet, as we shall see, the future need not be hopeless, even if the default course of evolution is dystopian. Evolution made us what we are, but no fundamental principle stands in the way of our developing the capability to intervene in the default course of events in order to steer future evolution towards a destiny more congenial to human values.

Directing our own evolution, however, requires coordination. If the default evolutionary course is dystopian, it would take coordinated paddling to turn the ship of humanity in a more favourable direction. If only some individuals chose the eudaemonic alternative while others pursued fitness-maximisation, then, by assumption, it would be the latter that would prevail. Fitnessmaximizing variants, even if they started out as a minority, would be preferentially selected for at the expense of eudaemonic agents, and a process would be set in motion that would inexorably lead to the minimisation or disappearance of eudaemonic qualities, and the non-eudaemonic agents would be left to run the show. To this problem there are only two possible solutions: preventing non-eudaemonic variants from arising in the first place, or modifying the fitness function so that eudaemonic traits become fitness-maximising. Let us examine these two options in turn. Preventing Non-eudaemonic Agents from Arising

It is quite plausible to suppose that technologically advanced life forms would be able to prevent unwanted mutations from occurring, at least if we understand “mutation” in a nar-

row sense. Cryptographic methods and error correcting codes could reduce transmission errors and copying errors to negligible levels. The control systems of nanotechnological replicators could be encrypted in such a way as to make them evolution-proof (any random change would be virtually certain to completely destroy the replicator).19 For uploads, avoiding reproductive mutation may simply be a matter of performing multiple verifications that the copy is identical to the original before it is run. Even for biological creatures unaided by nanotechnology, sufficiently advanced gene technology should make it possible to scan all embryos for unwanted mutations, and ordinary genetic recombination could be avoided with the use of reproductive cloning. Source code mutation and genetic recombination are not, however, the only ways in which new variants with unanticipated properties can arise. Consider again the uploading scenario where uploads outsource much of their functionality and share mental modules. Recombining different modules could result in unexpected emergent phenomena. Likewise, the enhancement of various cognitive or emotional capacities, or the instalment of entirely new capacities, could produce combinational effects that may not be fully predictable. Ordinary growth and maturation of an individual could lead to the development of a fitness-maximizing non-eudaemonic character, even where none is manifest at conception. Novel memetic influences might also trigger non-eudaemonic tendencies. So while it is plausible that an advanced life form could avoid random mutations in its source code, it is more dubious that it would be able to predict and avoid emergent effects of growth, enhancement, and learning in individuals or in interacting communities of developing agents. Preventing fitness-maximizing non-eudaemonic variants from occasionally arising may be infeasible or may require creating a completely static society where individual experimentation and enhancement are banned and where no social reorganisation is permitted. Such a fossilised world seems intrinsically undesirable.20

Even if the eudaemonic agents could prevent dangerous mutants from arising, their efforts would be to no avail if the original population already contained some individuals with noneudaemonic fitness-maximizing preferences, because these would then proliferate and eventually dominate. And we can surely assume that at least some current human individuals would upload if they could, would make many copies of themselves if they were uploads, and would happily embrace outsourcing or forego leisure if they could thereby increase their fitness. These

individuals would somehow have to disappear from the population, and it is hard to see any practical and ethical way in which this could happen. Forestalling the dystopian evolutionary scenarios by preventing non-eudaemonic agents from arising is therefore a non-starter. At most, this measure could serve an auxiliary role. In particular cases, it might make good sense to try to reduce the frequency with which dangerous mutants are spawned – in cases where this can be done relatively inexpensively, in an ethically acceptable way, and where clear and specific harms can be foreseen. For example, we might in the future pass laws against building powerful artificial intelligences with goal systems that are hostile to human values. But we cannot rely on this strategy alone to prevent a dystopian evolutionary scenario if such a scenario should happen to be the default. Modifying the Fitness Function

The second option is to modify the fitness function so that eudaemonic agents continue to have at least some niche in which they are fitnessmaximising. The differential reproductive success of human gene- or meme-types is determined not only by the natural habitat in which they live in but also by their social environment. Social institutions, laws, and other people’s attitudes define the choices open to us as individuals and determine the effects that these choices have on our inclusive fitness. Social structures could be arranged in a manner that reduces the fitness of non-eudaemonic types and enhances the fitness of eudaemonic types. These structures, if stable enough, could constrain evolutionary development to a set of trajectories on which the eudaemonic type flourishes.

It would be misleading to characterise such intervention as “helping the weak and unfit”. The way society is set up partially defines which types are fit and “strong” (in the sense of being able to use available means to proliferate). If we want to avoid evolutionary trajectories that lead to a region of state space where the qualities we value are extinct or marginalised, then social sculpting of the conditions for reproductive success might be our only recourse. The term “reproductive success” here covers not only biological sexual reproduction but also upload duplication and in general the spread of forms of organisations. Social shaping of the conditions for reproductive success is, of course, a fact of life for every organism that lives in societies; Philosophy 23

There are many possible singleton constitutions: a singleton could be a democratic world government, a benevolent and overwhelmingly powerful superintelligent machine, a world dictatorship, a stable alliance of leading powers, or even something as abstract as a generally diffused moral code that included provisions for ensuring its own stability and enforcement.

but the suggestion here is that it might become necessary to deliberately adjust these conditions so that they favour eudaemonic types.

We clearly do not need to remould all niches so that they favour eudaemonic agents. Doing that would be tantamount to working towards the elimination of all non-eudaemonic agents. But many non-eudaemonic agents are harmless; many are indeed highly useful to the eudaemonic agents. Just as current human beings benefit from other species, which pose no serious threat to the human species, so too may technologically more advanced agents benefit from the existence of an ecology of non-eudaemonic agents. Such non-eudaemonic agents could serve economically useful functions. Only those noneudaemonic agents that threaten to invade the niche occupied by the eudaemonic agents pose an evolutionary hazard; or, more precisely (since the eudaemonic agents could potentially move from one niche to another), the concern pertains to such non-eudaemonic agents as would reduce the total size of the niches available to eudaemonic types. The goal is to maximise the total quantity of resources possessed by eudaemonic agents, or at any rate to prevent this quantity from falling to zero. Non-eudaemonic agents, even if they reduce the fraction of resources possessed by eudaemonic agents, could on balance be beneficial if they also increased the total amount of resources available. Nonsentient property-owning robots, for example, could theoretically have that effect. Policies for Evolutionary Steering

What kind of intervention would be required to shape social conditions so that they favour eudaemonic types? One simple but crude method would be to ban outsourcing (and other kinds of non-eudaemonic phenotypes). Such a ban, however, would be costly since we are assuming that many productive tasks are most efficiently accomplished through outsourcing. A more efficient approach would be to tax outsourcing and subsidise eudaemonic cognitive architectures. That way, outsourcing would be used for the tasks where it brings the greatest returns and the level of taxation could be set at a level that ensures that the eudaemonic type continues to thrive.

One might think that there would be no economic rationale for subsidising the eudaemonic type, because to the extent that we value this type we would be willing to spend our own money on ensuring its existence, perhaps by devoting ourselves to eudaemonic activities. We

do not, in today’s world, see any special need to encourage present consumption by taxing investment. Might not individuals acting in a free market allocate their resources optimally between eudaemonic “consumption” and noneudaemonic “investment” (in enterprises that may produce resources that could later be eudaemonically consumed)? There are at least three potential reasons for being sceptical that the invisible hand would by itself orchestrate a workable, let alone optimal, solution to the problem of non-eudaemonic competition.

Firstly, property rights may not always be perfectly enforced. If non-eudaemonic types emerge and become immensely powerful, they might rob the eudaemonic agents. Such robbery could be blatant, as in a big coup or in a series of minor assaults by non-eudaemonic groups or individuals; or it could take a more subtle form, as in influencing governments to enact legislation unfairly favouring non-eudaemonic interests. Eudaemonic agents could also rob noneudaemonic agents, but because they would be less productive one would expect a net flow of resources to non-eudaemonic agents. Even if existing property rights were enforced, there would remain the vast opportunity cost of having the non-eudaemonic agents colonizing the cosmic commons for which property rights have not yet been assigned.21

Secondly, the values of the initial eudaemonic population may not be forever preserved. Such preservation would require either that the initial eudaemonic agents do not die and that their eudaemonic preferences do not change over the eons, or else that they choose to reproduce almost exclusively in ways that transmit their eudaemonic preferences to their progeny in undiluted form. If there were occasional crossovers where eudaemonic agents develop non-eudaemonic preference, or have offspring with such preferences, then this would need to be counterbalanced by an at least equally great flux in the opposite direction. We have already discussed the problem of preventing such crossovers from occurring.22 Thirdly, if the existence of a thriving hobbyist population is a public good (i.e., non-rivalrous and non-excludable), it will be undersupplied by the market. You and I and a million other people might all desire that there be eudaemonic agents in the world a long time from now. Each of us realises that our individual actions will have but a negligible effect on the outcome. We, therefore, each spend our resources on other goals, and the result is that the eudaemonic type disappears. This is compatible with our agreeing that our interests would have been better served

Philosophy 25

if some fraction of our resources had been set aside in a eudaemonics conservation fund. The provision of the global public good—in this case the continued existence of eudaemonic types into the indefinite future—has been thwarted by the free-rider problem.

(perhaps using mind-scanning techniques and technologies for controlling motivation). If such permanent commitments are possible, then when war breaks out, various budding coalitions may bargain for the allegiance of unaffiliated individuals. At this stage, some eudaemonic agents may strike favourable deals with what turns out to be the winning coalition. After victory, the eudaemonic agents in the winning coalition could not, by assumption, shift their allegiances, so the surviving eudaemonic agents may then have their security guaranteed in perpetuo.

Detour

Only a Singleton Could Control Evolution

For these three reasons, there is cause to doubt that a laissez-faire approach would give adequate protection to the eudaemonic type. But before we move on, let us consider again the first of these objections to the laissez-faire approach in a little more detail.

The concern was that it might be infeasible to ensure that property rights are perfectly enforced. Agents may occasionally steal each other’s resources; or, in a more extreme scenario, there may be a general war for resources. However, there seems no reason for thinking that such feuds would be a neatly bipolar contest between two grand coalitions, the eudaemonic and the non-eudaemonic agents fighting on opposing sides. Instead, there might be various and shifting alliances between individual eudaemonic and non-eudaemonic agents. In such a conflict, there would be a net social loss in terms of expenditure on protection and security services, armaments, and, probably also, in terms of casualties and collateral damage. There would almost certainly be an additional cost in terms of wasted opportunities for collaboration. But, assuming no doomsday weapon is deployed that causes the extinction of the entire population of intelligent life forms (which is not an innocuous supposition), we may still wonder whether such a conflict would necessarily lead to the eventual extinction of the eudaemonic type. Since what we have here is a case of two kinds of organism—one kind more efficient than the other—locked in a struggle for the same resource niche, one might expect, on ecological grounds, that the less efficient kind will eventually die out (some of the eudaemonic agents may survive but at price of losing their eudaemonic inclinations or being forced, in order to remain competitive, to keep those inclinations perpetually suppressed). But it is, in fact, not at all clear that this is what would happen. The situation differs from the case of competition between more primitive life forms such as plants and animals. The agents involved in this struggle can form strategic alliances. Moreover, by contrast to current human political competition, where alliances shift over time, it might be possible for more advanced life forms verifiably to commit themselves permanently to a particular alliance 26 Bedeutung

Even if the survivors of such a contest would in the end get to enjoy perpetual peace, they would have got there by a costly and risky detour. We could reach the same destination more directly, avoiding the wastage and attrition and some of the risk of conflict, by creating a singleton. The stable alliance that we speculated might form at the end of the conflict would in effect be a global regime that could enforce basic laws for its members; in other words, it would be a kind of singleton. In order to be assured of stability, it would not only have to lack external competitors; its domestic affairs would also have to be regulated in such a fashion that no internal challenges to its constitution could arise. This would require that the alliance implements a coordinated policy to prevent internal developments from ushering it onto an evolutionary trajectory that ends up toppling its constitutional agreement, and doing this would presumably involve modifying the fitness function for its internal ecology of agents, e.g. by means of a separate tax codes for eudaemonic and non-eudaemonic agents, combined perhaps with an outright ban on the creation of agents of the most dangerous types.

Reining in evolution is a feat that could only be accomplished by a singleton. A local power might be able to control the evolution of its own internal ecology, yet unless these interventions served to maximise its total productivity (which would be incompatible with affirmative action for eudaemonic activities), evolutionary selection would simply reemerge at a higher level. Those powers that opted to maximise their economic rather than their eudaemonic productivity would outperform rival powers that were less single-mindedly fixated on advancing their competitive situation, and in the long run the eudaemonic powers would become marginalised or extinct or would be forced to rescind their eudaemonic policies. In this context, the

“long run” may actually be quite short, especially in the uploading scenario where reproduction could be extremely rapid. Moreover, if the eudaemonic powers could anticipate that they would be outcompeted if they continued with their eudaemonic activities, they may decide to scale back on such activities even before they were overrun by the non-eudaemonic powers. Such anticipatory effects could produce immediate manifestations of evolutionary developments that would otherwise take a long time to unfold. The upshot, in either case, would be a tremendous loss of eudaemonic potential.

A singleton could prevent this unfortunate outcome by promoting eudaemonic types and activities within its own jurisdiction.23 Since a singleton would lack external competitors, there would be no higher level at which evolutionary selection could gain a foothold and start penalising the singleton’s policy of non-maximisation of economic productivity.

A singleton need not be a monolith (except in the trivial sense that has some kind of mechanism or decision procedure that enables it to solve internal coordination problems). There are many possible singleton constitutions: a singleton could be a democratic world government, a benevolent and overwhelmingly powerful superintelligent machine, a world dictatorship, a stable alliance of leading powers, or even something as abstract as a generally diffused moral code that included provisions for ensuring its own stability and enforcement.24 A singleton could be a rather minimalist structure that could operate without significantly disrupting the lives of its inhabitants. And it need not prohibit novelty and experimentation, since it would retain the capacity to intervene at a later stage to protect its constitution if some developments turned malignant.

Increased social transparency, such as may result from advances in surveillance technology or lie detection, could facilitate the development of a singleton.25 Deliberate international political initiatives could also lead to the gradual emergence of a singleton, and such initiatives might be dramatically catalysed by ‘wild card’ events such as a series of cataclysms that highlighted the disadvantages of a fractured world order. It would be a mistake to judge the plausibility of the ultimate development of a singleton on the basis of ephemeral trends in current international affairs. The basic conditions shaping political realities may change as new technologies come online, and it is worth noting that the long-term historical trend is towards increasing scope of human coordination and political integration.26 If this trend continues, the logical culmination is a singleton.

Conclusion

Contrary to the Panglossian view, current evidence does not warrant any great confidence in the belief that the default course of future human evolution points in a desirable direction. In particular, we have examined a couple of dystopian scenarios in which evolutionary competition leads to the extinction of the life forms we regard as valuable. Intrinsically worthwhile experience could turn out not to be adaptive in the future.

The only way to avoid these outcomes, if they do indeed represent the default trajectory, is to assume control over evolution. It was argued that this would require the creation of a singleton. The singleton would lack external competitors, and its decision mechanism would be sufficiently integrated to enable it to solve internal coordination problems, in particular the problem of how to reshape the fitness function for its internal agent ecology to favour eudaemonic types. A mere local power could also attempt to do this, but it would thereby decrease its competitiveness and ensure its own eventual demise. Long-term control of evolution requires global coordination. A singleton could take a variety of forms and need not resemble a monolithic culture or a hive mind. Within the singleton there could be room for a wide range of different life forms, including ones that focus on non-eudaemonic goals. The singleton could ensure the survival and flourishing of the eudaemonic types by restricting the ownership rights of non-eudaemonic entities, by subsidising eudaemonic activities, by guaranteeing the enforcement of property rights, by prohibiting the creation of agents with human-unfriendly values or psychopathic tendencies, or in a number of other ways. Such a singleton could guide evolutionary developments and prevent our cosmic commons from going to waste in a first-come-first-served colonisation race. The reflections offered in this paper are not meant to be the final word on the matter. We do not know that a dystopian scenario is the default evolutionary outcome. Even if it is, and even if the creation of a singleton is the only way to forestall ultimate catastrophe, it is a separate question as to what policies it makes sense to promote in the here and now. While creating a singleton would help to reduce certain risks, it may at the same time increase others, such as the risk that an oppressive regime could become global and permanent. If our preliminary study serves to draw attention to some possibly nonobvious considerations and to stimulate more rigorous analytic work, its purpose will have been achieved.

Philosophy 27

1 For an argument that both geological and human history manifest such a trend towards greater complexity, see (Wright 1999). For an opposing argument (criticised in chapter 9 of Wright’s book), see (Gould 1990) 2 For the theory of observation selection effects, see (Bostrom 2002a) and references therein. 3 But see e.g. (Carter 1983, 1989; Bostrom 2002a; Hanson 1998b). 4 For more on existential risks, and the classification of these into “bangs”, “whimpers”, and other categories, see (Bostrom 2002b); also (Leslie 1996; Rees 2003; Posner 2004). 5 On singletons, see (Bostrom 2006). 6 Uploading would involve first freezing a brain, then slicing it, then scanning the slices with some high-resolution scanning technique, then using automated image processing software to reconstruct and tag a very detailed 3d map of the original brain. The map would show all the neurons, the matrix of their synaptic interconnections, the strengths of these connections, and other relevant detail. Using computational models of how these basic elements operate, the whole brain could then be emulated on a sufficiently capacious computer. For more details, see (Sandberg & Bostrom 2008). 7 Some speculations on the future ecology of intelligent agents can be found in (Chislenko 1996; Moravec 1989; Moravec 1999); cf. also (Minsky 1988). There is a vast economic literature on contracts, transaction costs, the size of the firm etc. that form a relevant background for thinking about the plausibility of the Outsourcing scenario, but a review of this literature is beyond the scope of this paper; the locus classicus is (Coase 1937). 8 Some fundamentalist nationalists may believe that a nation state has independent moral status and is entitled to human sacrifice even when no human need would be served. Most of us reject such views. 9 There is recent evidence of genetic influence on human fertility outcomes beyond what can be attributed to equilibrium mutation rates; see (Kirk 2001; Rogers et al. 2003). 10 There is already some data suggesting memetic effects on fitness. The expansion of the Hutterites, an Anabaptist sect, is attributable to their extremely high fertility rate (Eaton and Mayer 1953). An average Hutterite woman gives birth to nine children. The Hutterites are opposed to any kind of birth control and see high fertility as a sign of divine blessing. Roman Catholic women have about 20% higher reproductive fitness than women of other religions (Kirk 2001). By contrast, supporters of VHEMT (The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement) have foresworn having children altogether, which would give them zero fitness (Knight 2001). University educated women have 35% lower fitness than those with less than seven years of education (Kirk 2001), and non-religious women also have lower than average fitness. 11 Even if we could colonise the universe in all directions at light speed, this would only increase the resources under human control polynomially (at a rate of ~ t2) whereas unconstrained population growth can easily be exponential (~ e t). 12 For an analysis of the economics of uploading, see (Hanson 1994). 13 Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), political economist and demographer, argued that the standard of living for the working class could not raised without population control because increased income would eventually lead to workers having more surviving children, which would drive wages back down again. But Malthus was not as thoroughly pessimistic as is commonly thought. In the second, rarely read, edition of his essay on population he writes: “Though our future prospects respecting the mitigation of the evils arising from the principle of population may not be as bright as we could wish, yet they are far from being entirely disheartening.” (Malthus 1803). 14 (Kansa 2003). 15 See e.g. (Zehavi et al. 1999). 16 See (Miller 2000a). 17 (Kansa 2003). For a provocative take, see also (Frank 2000). 18 Strict enforcement of property rights might limit the destruction to resources not originally owned by the eudaemonic agents. The latter might even manage to salvage some additional resources by colonizing new territories, although eventually the opportunities for such acquisition would disappear as the fitness maximisers (being ex hypothesi more efficient) would have got there first. The dynamics of such a colonisation race is analyzed in (Hanson 1998a). 19 See (Drexler 1985). 20 Cf. (Huxley 1932). 21 See (Hanson 1998a). 22 We noted that error-correcting codes should make reproduction arbitrarily reliable. Uploads do not suffer biological aging, and the habit of maintaining backup copies at dispersed locations should reduce the risk of accidental death to a very low level. As a potential way of reducing the risk that basic preferences could drift in unexpected ways when new capacities are installed or learned, it would be interesting to consider the use of safety pacts. The idea is that you empower some agents that you trust to reverse your self-modifications if they believe that the modifications have changed you in a way that you would not have approved of prior to the change. If you are an upload, you might also be able to create a copy of yourself, and then appoint this copy as a trusted overseer of the transformation process with the authority to reverse the changes you have made within some interval if it judges that the modifications have been for the worse. It could also be worth exploring how such hypothetical techniques relate to dispositional theories of value (Lewis 1989; Johnston 1989), to ideal observer theory, and more generally to the ethics of human enhancement (Glover 1984; Bostrom 2004; Bostrom and Roache 2007; Savulescu and Bostrom 2009). 23 One may wonder how a space-colonizing singleton could enforce its laws over cosmic distances and do so without disintegrating even over time-scales of millions of years. Yet this seems to be at root a technical problem. One solution would be to ensure that the goal-system of all colonisers it sends out include a fundamental desire to obey the basic laws of the singleton. And one of these laws may be to make sure that any progeny produced must also share this fundamental desire. Moreover, the basic law could stipulate that as technology improves, the safety-standards for reproduction (the degree of verification required to ensure that progeny or colonisation probes share the fundamental desire to obey the basic constitution) improve correspondingly, so that the probability of defection asymptotically approaches zero. While this proposal may seem technologically daunting, we must bear in mind that any galactic empire would be technologically extremely advanced. A singleton could postpone wide-ranging space colonisation until it had developed the control technology necessary to ensure its own long-term stability. 24 For a scenario of this kind, see (Miller 2000b). 25 See (Brin 1998). 26 For a persuasive case for this claim, see (Wright 1999).

28 Bedeutung

Bostrom, N. (2002a), Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy. New York: Routledge. ——— (2002b), "Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards", Journal of Evolution and Technology 9. ——— (2003), The Transhumanist FAQ: v 2.1. World Transhumanist Association. http://www.transhumanism.org/resources/FAQv21.pdf. ——— (2005), "Transhumanist Values", in Fredrick Adams (ed.), Ethical Issues for the Twenty-First Century, special conference edition of Journal of Philosophical Research. ——— (2006), 'What is a Singleton?', Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations 5 (2): 48-54. Bostrom, N. and Roache, R. (2007) "Ethical Issues in Human Enhancement", in J. Ryberg, T. Petersen, and C. Wolf (eds.), New Waves in Applied Ethics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan: 120-152. Brin, D. (1998), The Transparent Society. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Carter, B. (1983), "The Anthropic Principle and its Implications for Biological Evolution", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 310: 347363. ——— (1989), "The Anthropic Selection Principle and the Ultra-Darwinian Synthesis", in F. Bertola and U. Curi (eds.), The Anthropic Principle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 33-63. Chislenko, A. (1996), Networking in the Mind Age. Unpublished manuscript. http://www.ethologic.com/sasha/mindage.html. Coase, R. H. (1937), "The Nature of the Firm", Economica 4 (16): 386-405. Drexler, K. E. (1985), Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology. London: Forth Estate. Eaton, J. W. and Mayer, A. J. (1953) "The Social Biology of Very High Fertility Among the Hutterites; the Demography of a Unique Population", Human Biology 25 (3): 206-64. Frank, R. H. ( 2000), Luxury Fever: Money and Happiness in an Era of Excess. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Glover, J. (1984), What Sort of People Should There Be? London: Penguin. Gould, S. J. (1990), Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Hanson, R. (1994), "What If Uploads Come First: The Crack of a Future Dawn", Extropy 6 (2). ——— (1998a), Burning the Cosmic Commons: Evolutionary Strategies for Interstellar Colonization. Unpublished manuscript. http://hanson.gmu.edu/ filluniv.pdf. ——— (1998b), Must Early Life be Easy? The Rhythm of Major Evolutionary Transitions. Unpublished. http://hanson.gmu.edu/hardstep.pdf. Huxley, A. (1932), Brave New World. London: Chatto & Windus. Johnston, M. (1989), "Dispositional Theories of Value", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. 63: 139-174. Kansa, E. (2003), "Social Complexity and Flamboyant Display in Competition: More Thoughts on the Fermi Paradox". Working paper. Kirk, K. M. (2001), "Natural Selection and Quantitative Genetics of Life-History Traits in Western Women: A Twin Study", Evolution 55 (2): 432-435. Knight, L. U. (2001), The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. http://www.vhemt.org/. Leslie, J. (1996), The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction. London: Routledge. Lewis, D. (1989), "Dispositional Theories of Value", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. 63: 113-137. Malthus, T. R. (1803), An Essay on the Principle of Population. 2nd ed. London: J. Johnson. Miller, G. (2000a), The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature. New York: Doubleday. ——— (2000b) Moral Vision. Unpublished manuscript. http://www.unm.edu/~gfmiller/new_papers2/miller%202000%20moralvision.doc. Minsky, M. (1988), Society of Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster. Moravec, H. (1989), Mind Children. Harvard: Harvard University Press. ——— (1999), Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. Posner, R. (2004), Catastrophe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rees, M. (2003), Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind's Future in This Century - On Earth and Beyond. New York: Basic Books. Rogers, J. L., et al. (2003), "Genetic Influence Helps Explain Variation in Human Fertility: Evidence From Recent Behavioural and Molecular Genetic Studies", Current Directions in Psychological Science 10 (5): 184-188. Sandberg, A. and Bostrom, N. (2008), Whole Brain Emulation: A Roadmap. Technical Report #2008-3, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University. http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/Reports/2008-3.pdf Savulescu, J. and Bostrom, N. (eds.) (2009), Human Enhancement. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wright, R. (1999), Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny. New York: Pantheon Books. Zehavi, A., et al. (1999), The Handicap Principle: A Missing Piece of Darwin's Puzzle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

A draft version of this paper circulated in May 2001. An earlier version of this paper was published in Death and Anti-Death: Two Hundred Years After Kant, Fifty Years After Turing, ed. Charles Tandy (Ria University Press: Palo Alto, California, 2004), pp. 339-371. I’m grateful to Wei Dai, Robin Hanson, and Rebecca Roache for comments.

Philosophy 29

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visit www.bedeutung.co.uk

Art 31

Bedeutung interviews the Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, Nick Bostrom Interview: Michael Withey

Q: A:

First of all, I’d like to ask you about the transhumanist movement as it stands today, specifically the debates which are occurring within the movement and debates with other philosophies.

It depends on how broadly or narrowly you define the transhumanist movement, because there is an organisation called the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), who are self-identified transhumanists doing that. Then, I think, there is a much larger set of people who hold transhumanist views but they don’t call themselves transhumanists, they might not even have heard of the term. So there’s a much broader stream in our culture and society who hold transhumanist views but don’t have that identification. With regard to the more narrowly-defined, self-described trans-humanists, right now, within the WTA, we are discussing going forward, to try to broaden the appeal by filing off the sharp edges and removing some ballast of assumptions; to make it mainstream, as it were. Other people think that it is very important to hang on to the more radical assumptions. But that’s a debate you have in any organisation: how to position, present your views. So, what would you describe as the more radical and more mainstream tenets of transhumanism?

The more mainstream part of it has to do with technologies which are here today, or which we can foresee within the next 10-15 years or so. Mild drugs to improve memory slightly, some interventions which might extend a healthy human lifespan, things that really skip around the surface of human nature. This debate has by now reached into the mainstream already: a couple of weeks ago there was an editorial in 34 Bedeutung

Nature on cognitive enhancement and the call for it, basically accepting attitudes towards cognitive enhancers, that we should have more money to research these, but also that we should think about implications for equality and prevent situations where people feel pressured to use them: but yes, it’s a good idea. And there are many signs that, at least here in the UK, many of these near-term prospects are quite widely accepted. I first got interested in transhumanism some twelve years ago. At the time, the discussion would revolve around whether this was all science fiction, or if it could actually happen. Now, the discussion is different: it’s often quickly agreed that a lot of these transhumanist prospects could happen, we don’t know exactly when or which ones, but a lot of this will eventually happen, and the question is whether they should. So, it’s moved from the factual to the normative question. I see that as some progress. Of course, I would like to see the discussion move one step further: not just yes or no, for or against enhancement, but to the next stage which, in my view should be 'yes, there are a lot of ways of enhancing human beings which are highly desirable, but we need to figure out how we can do that, in what context and what social policy is needed to ensure that benefits are distributed evenly' and so forth. I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but that’s the direction in which I’m hoping transhumanism is moving. But, in transhumanist discourse there has always been an interest in more far-future possibilities— not just about the tinkering which can be done in the next decade or two, but also what technological development could mean for humanity in the long run, questions about posthumanity, possibilities of artificial intelligence, extreme longevity. There’s a terminological distinction here, isn’t there, between transhuman and posthuman–as I understand it, a

transhuman would be someone who enhances his natural capabilities to the sort of levels achieved only by a few today, and a posthuman would be someone who far outstrips these limits.

You could, but the reality is that these words are vague, and ‘posthuman’, in addition to being vague—also bigoted—it’s probably not a very helpful term at this point, just because it causes probably more confusion than understanding. Now, some people outside of the transhumanist circle argue that we are already posthuman because we have, say, computers, and this changes the way we think about ourselves and the human mind. So, the perception of what humanity is has changed. There may be something to this, but it’s all very different from the transhumanist concern with how science and technology might not just change our perception of the world, but also change the world – in particular, the human organism in a biological way, which, in my view, is a lot more profound than changing the metaphors about how the human mind operates. So, there is always this tension in transhumanism between, on the one hand, taking seriously these long-term, radical possibilities; and, on the other, being interested in, and wanting to have some impact on the here and now. And there are tensions in that, because it’s a lot easier to have a direct impact on ongoing policy debates and get accepted onto forums if you remain exclusively focused on current concerns, whereas these more futuristic concerns sound wild and frighten people off. Nevertheless, in my view it’s important to keep both of these in the discussion – not that at any given point, in any given meeting, you have to discuss all of this, but try and ultimately forge an understanding that doesn’t compartmentalise our thinking into one long term sciencefiction realm and the other politics today, but to see that these are ultimately connected and I think that this is the path to great wisdom.

Does the transhumanist movement have a conception of ethics, or meta-ethics?

Transhumanism is not a full-fledged philosophical system, which has a developed meta-ethics, a developed metaphysics, a developed epistemology: it’s not a package deal. Different transhumanists might have different value theories; some might not have thought about it at all, it’s hard to say. But the common denominator is that there are possible modes of being, ways of living, which are currently inaccessible to us because of our biological restrictions, but could be extremely valuable, good for us; so not just that some people can exist who have greater levels of wellbeing, but that there are possible paths of transformation for us from where we are now that would be good for us. Just as you might think of a baby growing up: it’s a very profound transformation that it changes the character of that individual in a very profound way, and yet we do not think it’s bad for a baby to grow. And, somewhat analogously, I think there are these possible developmental trajectories foreclosed to us because we die too early, after just 70-80 years, which is nowhere near enough, I think, to reach any sort of reasonable level of maturity of the whole. More subtly, we are limited by the kinds of brains we are working with, which might not be capable of a huge number of thoughts and feelings and sensations. So, there’s no reason to suppose that the brains we humans have are free of all limitations when all the other creatures we see have very severe limitations. Would you say that transhumanism is committed to one particular idea of a particular human good, or of human flourishing?

Not just one idea of that: different transhumanists emphasise different aspects of it. You could plug in most philosophical accounts of human well-being or human flourishing, and then see how they play out within the transhumanist framework. Suppose you have a very

simple theory, like hedonism, according to which suffering is bad and pleasure is good, and you want to achieve the greatest balance of pleasure, and that’s what well-being consists in. Now, I’m not advocating that particular view, but suppose you do hold that view, you reflect a little bit, and you see that the root of most suffering is not external, but it is in the human psyche itself: we are not built for sustainable pleasures. Even if the circumstances are very good, we quickly get used to them, and you have this hedonic treadmill. There’s a set point of well-being that you always return to. If you win the lottery, you might be happy for a few days or a few weeks and then you return to your set point, which we know has a significant genetic component. So, the conclusion of all of this is that, if you’re serious about improving subjective well-being, eventually you will have to do something about the neural machinery which underlies subjective well-being. Then you get into this idea of what David Pierce calls paradise engineering: re-engineering our minds to become more capable of sustained well-being. Now, suppose you have another account of well-being, one which emphasises engagement with beauty and achievement and knowledge; some more classical humanist conception, for example. Well, there too, you can easily see that there are all sorts of ways in which our well-being in that sense is restricted by our biological limitation: lifespan, limits on the time we have to develop, our memories decay, our intelligence is blocked, our emotional life is less broad or rich than sometimes we would want it to be. Those limitations can be overcome to some extent by behaviour such as meditation, healthy eating to gain a few more years of life, studying hard: you might overcome some of your limitations cognitively. You work on your character, you ennoble your emotions, but there’s only so far those things can take you, so ultimately we need help from something that can change our biology more fun-

damentally. If you go through different conceptions of value and well-being, you could bring about a greater realisation of value if you don’t just change the world around you, but change the internal world. One philosophical theme which seems to run throughout transhumanist literature is how it conceives of the distinction between culture and nature. It seems to me that it seeks to break down this distinction, looking at nature as an essentially technological phenomenon, something which continually adapts, generates tools and finds uses for them, and suchlike; and culture as something which is a natural phenomenon.

This is a common thought. I guess, at the bottom there is the observation that it’s hard to make a meaningful distinction between nature and non-nature when you start to think about it. I look around today and a lot of the things that people would classify as natural were once not considered natural. All the things that make up modern civilization, save the last 50-100 years of inventions, a lot of moderns think of as natural. Simple agriculture—a man drawing a plough—or something like that. There was a time when all of these were artificial. So there are many different ways that once you begin to think about the distinction between natural and non-natural, it’s really difficult to make one out that’s not arbitrary. Now, for transhumanists that’s not really a problem, as transhumanists don’t think that there is anything of fundamental normative importance riding on this distinction: ultimately it doesn’t matter if something’s natural or non-natural. So, transhumanists are happy to acknowledge that there is no distinction or that the distinction is somewhat arbitrary. On the other hand, if you’re a bioconservative—one who opposes the idea of enhancement, who is suspicious of human attempts to tinker with nature—then obviously you depend on what is enhancement and what’s not enhancement – what is nature, what is not. Philosophy 35

And this distinction seems to be fundamental to other transhumanist concerns. For example, the distinction between enhancement and therapeutic technology; between correcting a deficiency in nature and enhancing nature.

From a normative point of view, it doesn’t matter whether it’s enhancement or therapy. I do think that in certain contexts the distinction is still useful, not as much from a moral point of view as from a technical one. I’ve written a paper with a colleague of mine, Andrew Sandberg, on what we call the evolution heuristic, which exposes a heuristic for exploring promising intervention opportunities, where the challenge is where you might look. The human organism is a very complex system, it’s not very well understood, and if we’re going to go in and tinker randomly, our tinkering might backfire – that would mean long-term side effects. This is true, not just in medicine, but in order to fix things which break, and we would expect it to be even more true when we’re trying to enhance something that was already functioning as it is designed to by evolution. But within this heuristic we have developed, it’s sometimes useful to distinguish between therapeutic and enhancing interventions, since they have slightly different implications for where we should look for effective ways of doing it. But I’m very happy with acknowledging that there is nothing of fundamental moral importance to this distinction. In many cases it’s arbitrary: for example whether we’d call a vaccination therapeutic, because it prevents disease, or an enhancement, because it enhances your immune system. I’d like to explore further the transhumanist attitude to the good. How would you respond to the claim that the limitations of the human body might be necessary to life having any meaning? Two examples seem pertinent here – sport, for instance. If I’m playing basketball, it’s not necessarily the case that I want to be Michael Jordan – rather, I want to challenge my own physical limits. I 36 Bedeutung

want to engage with the contingency of my body, and play to the best of my ability. Wouldn’t this be undermined if I could just, say, pop a pill to make you play like Michael Jordan? The second category which could be threatened in this way would be aesthetics. For example, a large part of Beethoven’s appeal is the fact that you know he’s engaging with his own mortality, and you can understand that because you’re mortal yourself. If you overcome the limitations of the human body, such experiences would be rendered senseless – it would be a series of pretty notes, which lack meaning.

With sport, it’s sometimes true that we want to create limits to make an activity more interesting. All of sports, to some extent, is based on arbitrary limits. It’s an activity which is almost defined by the fact that you choose to adopt some arbitrary rules to enhance our experience. It’s a great thing we are able to do that and, presumably, without some forced external limitations; we can more creatively choose to adopt limitations where it would enhance our lives and enhance our experiences. Now, I do have a problem with the idea that great art somehow excuses the suffering that some great artists have undergone: I find it very callow to suppose that we should be grateful to the Gulag because then we can read Solzhenitsyn, or to say that Mozart’s dying enabled his Requiem to be written and therefore it’s somehow good that he had to go through this – I don't think that’s the morally correct way of looking at these things. I also think that it’s the case we already have a lot of art on the ‘dark side’. We would retain all of that, and there’s a lot of art which can be done which isn’t about death or suffering; we could also have art which celebrates how good life is, or which is just about the natural world. So I think it would be absurd to preserve human suffering just so we can listen to the screams of anguish which issue forth from the tortured human soul. One of the problems I see with trans-

humanism is not so much that it undermines nature, but that it has the potential to undermine culture. If we’d take the natural span of human life, we see that the biological progress of the human body, from birth through its ageing and towards death allows for a meaning to be given to life; as we get older and our bodily state changes, we have different roles: a son, a husband, a father, a grandfather. Institutions such as marriage allow us to gain a conceptual understanding of the natural human process of ageing and death. Could a transhumanist preserve this meaning to human life, or would it result in a long, meaningless life devoted to sensual pleasures?

Well, I think that there would be a great task for culture and for inventing new culture if some of the basic biological parameters of human nature changed. There would be a great need to develop a new culture around that, which enables opportunities for human flourishing that this would release. I think sometimes technology runs ahead of culture. A trivial example might be when cellphones became commonly used. There weren’t any cultural norms limiting when you should use them, so people would carry them into the cinema or the theatre and they would start ringing all the time. When society had a bit more experience with this technology, it developed norms: you’re supposed to switch off your cellphones when you listen to a concert. That’s a limited case, but in the general case, there’s an inescapable role for the creation of culture to make the most of the new circumstances. This is the case with extended lifespan in particular, but also the other ways in which human capacities might be enhanced. How do you think man would find meaning in a transhumanist world? Would, say, new social roles have to be found for man?

There are two parts to my answer. If we are thinking of extreme life extension, it is my view that long before that there would be a big population of people

who are several hundred years old and there would be other profound changes in the human condition. That makes it a lot harder to evaluate that scenario – I think that within hundreds of years we might have uploaded into computers, or changed our minds to become super-intelligent and have complete control of our emotional states. There would be so many changes that it would be naïve—perhaps—to think of a scenario where nothing else changes except for the fact that there are now a lot of old geezers who are healthy and several hundred years old. But, suppose we do want to acknowledge that scenario; if we model it on ageing today, it would be a very sad sight, as what you find is that when you get older today you lose some of your vital energy or interest in life. Inside the brain, dopamine neurons idle off at an alarming rate, which affects your personality and your ability to find meaning in life and activities you find worth engaging in. So we’re going to postulate for the scenario to be at all desirable that biologically you should remain in excellent condition – I would agree that keeping the number of older people alive for longer with respirators would not really be all that worthwhile. Truly conserving youth and vitality, rather than keeping the heart pumping longer, should be the aim. There are a number of things to say. We might note that, today, a lot of people—depending on what state of mind you’re in—may be said to lead meaningless lives. If you’re in a certain state of mind, you might see lot of people leading not very meaningful lives. If you’re in a cynical state of mind, you will see someone getting up, going to work, watching television, then going to bed, and repeating this for forty years. From one point of view, this is all a meaningless drill. However, if you zoom in and have a more sympathetic state of mind, you will discover all sorts of happy occurrences: a phonecall from the children, a cup of tea with the paper in the morning, a stroll in the park with the dog, these little things in life that create meaning. So, human life

today can appear empty and meaningless or can seem wonderful. Similarly, if you imagine life extended much longer, even if it didn’t change in quality, I think the value you place on that would depend on your state of mind when you’re contemplating it. For the same reason that it’s good to prevent people dying from cancer or of strokes, it’s good to do something about the underlying process which leads to most illnesses – the process of senescence, the damage that builds up in our bodies as we age. Indigestible molecules that our cells can’t digest and eventually clog up the machinery, mutations in our mitochondrial DNA and so forth. Eventually, this will result in pathology. It needs pointing out that preventing these processes is to preserve human life and human health. Then, we can worry about how to make the most out of the life we’ve got. If somebody’s dying, you first save their lives, and then you worry about how they can achieve maximal fulfilment. What about the risks associated with transhumanism? You make, in your paper, Existential Threats, the explicit point that technology such as nuclear technology, and with possible new technologies such as nanotechnology, we have, for the first time in human history, the possibility of bringing about a global catastrophe. If there’s a non-trivial risk of a catastrophe occurring, is it ethical to pursue these technologies?

A significant proportion of my research is on the risks of future technologies. The risks are major, but I do believe that these risks can be confronted regardless of whether the transhumanist movement is very successful or not. The question is how we can reduce and mitigate these risks, and this is often a non-trivial question to answer. There are many different risks: you could have a situation where some technology would eventually be developed and all you would achieve by some moral prohibition against developing it would be that subscribe the people most moved by www.bedeutung.co.uk moral imperatives would refrain from

developing it, and some other group of people or nation would develop it instead, who don’t suffer these moral scruples. The outcome of that could be an increase rather than a decrease in danger – it’s a more dangerous world if the most dangerous people are the ones with the most powerful technologies. That’s one example of a complication that makes it difficult to infer from the fact that there is a risk to the conclusion that we should therefore not go in that direction. Now, I do think with regard to human enhancement technologies in particular, that there are differences between different kinds of enhancement technologies, in terms of the levels of risk they pose. I believe that enhancements of emotion, personality, motivation have a potential great risk associated with them – it’s one thing if you’re using it to help people with severe depression, but if you roll this out on a broad scale, if we use these technologies unwisely, gradually we could transform ourselves to such an extent that we lost something which is essential to what we value in the world; we slide down some slippery slope, we lose some deep value. By taking small steps, each of which seems convenient, but cumulatively add up to some tragic loss that we may never even notice, because we—also—lose our ability to recognise this value. For that reason, although I think that, ultimately, this emotional, mood, personality redesign holds great promise for ameliorating the human condition, I think we should go easy on our paradise engineering until we have the wisdom to do it right. I think that fools will build a fool’s paradise, and we should perhaps start by trying to make ourselves wiser and smarter. That would put us in a better position to determine from there what further changes we would want to make. The obvious question which arises here is that emotion and wisdom seem closely intertwined. I think few emotions can be characterised as being intrinsically bad or good: to be angry all the time is undesirable but, certainly, is desirPhilosophy 37

Although I think that, ultimately, this emotional, mood, personality redesign holds great promise for ameliorating the human condition, I think we should go easy on our paradise engineering until we have the wisdom to do it right. I think that fools will build a foolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s paradise.

able in certain situations, and the question is having the wisdom to distinguish between the two. Similarly, depression may be a terrible thing, but eliminating sadness would mean eliminating a certain depth to life.

Yes, and I think this is why we should be careful and go easy on that kind of manipulation. I do think that in some cases there is a trade-off; there’s a humanitarian imperative to relieve intense and great human suffering, to cure depression, but for people whose lives are already quite good, and who are at the peak of their powers, I think it would be dangerous if those people 'en masse' started to modify their mood and personality with drugs which are not very well understood, and it would be better to postpone that kind of experimentation until we have developed more wisdom and understanding of the consequences of that kind of manipulation. You take a very liberal view on reproductive technology – people should be able to select the best genes for their children and make them more intelligent. There is an obvious point here, though, isn’t there: that if 90% of people pick genes to make their children more intelligent, those parents who don’t select the best children would be imposing a real cost on their children – their children would be unable to compete with other children, their life opportunities would be severely restricted.

I think in practical terms. The best policy would be one which left a huge amount of personal choice to parents, because I think that, all things considered, that’s the least likely to infringe on autonomy and is least likely to result in a dangerous concentration of power in the state to dictate reproductive choices. It is true that you could end up in scenarios where you would have to draw a line between what is permissible and what is not. I could imagine a few sadistic parents who might want to make their children suffer, and eventually you would have to lay down limits and tell people not to do that – parents have a

lot of freedom in how to raise their children, but in the case of clear child abuse, the state should intervene. At some point, you would confront the situation where, if you have an enhancement that is known to be completely safe and has a clear benefit to the child-to-be, it'll have to be considered whether you would not be negligent as a parent if you failed to provide your child-to-be with that enhancement. I don’t have a nice formula for when negligence would be large enough for it to be right for the state to intervene. Think of today: we have mandatory schooling and even if parents would not like their children to go to school, they still have to do it, since we think it's an important thing for a child to have a rich set of options in life. So, theoretically, in the long run, if these were very safe and social acceptability was very broad, and if the benefits were very clear, you might have a situation where the state could mandate enhancement which would give a richer range of options in life and would allow children to participate in a democratic society. People often talk about the rise of a ‘cognitive elite’ in transhumanism. Isn’t there a risk of cognitively enhanced people being able to pass on more and more benefits to their children, who would be able to do the same to their children? Over time, there would be a huge disparity between a member of the cognitive elite and the masses.

Well, that’s not too different from the situation which we have today – except they don’t have more children, they have fewer children. There are elements of this which we already see, and generally we don’t think the solution is to close the best schools because they’re good for the pupils, for example. The answer is to improve the worst schools, so they can be closer to the best schools. And, similarly, with cognitive enhancements, rather than restricting access, our aim should be to make them more broadly available to children of poor parents. Philosophy 39

L I V I N G

DANGEROUSLY,

MISERABLY and UNCONVENTIONALLY

Constantine Tsoucalas

ow far can and should societies go to protect their members from the dangers that threaten them? What exactly is meant by ‘danger’, whom does it concern and who is threatened by it? How is the issue of personal liberty connected to the moral and statutory limits of the undeniable ‘existential’ disposition of a person to choose those dangers s/he wishes to risk? On what basis can the State justify ‘security measures’ that serve to protect those who wish to act (or even think) dangerously? To what degree and with what qualifications is it legitimate to enforce upon citizens a model of behaviour that complies with general(-ised) ‘safety’ imperatives? Today, more than ever before, these questions are of profoundly pertinent importance. Scientific and technological advances not only multiply the range and kinds of lurking dangers; often, they also make them unpredictable, invisible, generalised, indivisible and, therefore—and precisely for these reasons—statistical. Consequently, because human destiny can neither be interpreted by reference to Holy intervention, nor as a result of contingency, the distribution of dangers is elevated to an issue of major political and moral importance. In contrast to past fatalistic ‘societies of dangers’, we are presently heading towards free and rational societies of risk-taking. It is remarkable, however, that, although reliable answers to the aforementioned basic questions cannot be given, we all seem to act and think as if they could. Take as an example an overwhelming problem of our modern societies: that of illegal substance abuse. It is an issue that, precisely because of its intensity, tends to be handled without even endeavouring to provide reliable answers to these elementary yet fundamental questions.

Indeed, statutory and political regulations and social changes are enacted in a philosophical and ethical void. Evil with capitalised ‘E’ must be defeated on account of it simply being evil. Nobody is asking who is defeating whom, why, with what purpose and on what premises. The State shies away from designating and qualifying its position except fragmentarily, exceptionally and obscurely. So long as it is taken for granted that drug (ab-)use can have destructive side-effects for the users themselves, these people must be punished; if not for any other reason, then as an example to others. Laws, ‘common sense’ and the media converge: society must defend itself against this phenomenon, and that’s the end of the argument. This formula is—to say the least—simplistic and it is so from a number of perspectives. I shall not press the point—which is simple and obvious and, anyway, of secondary importance—that the so-called ‘soft drugs’ (hashish and marijuana) are, as is commonly admitted, much less addictive and harmful than legal substances, such as tobacco, alcohol, medicines etc. I will also proceed past the equally unquestionable fact that the international conglomerate of criminals—producers and traffickers of narcotics—is financially and politically much more powerful and influential than the pharmaceutical industry. And it goes without saying that the Internet has significantly thwarted any attempt to adequately defend one’s borders against the increasing and readily available offer of these destructive substances, networks and information. Finally, I will not discuss the issue of the way in which the undifferentiated and careless prosecution/persecution of users and victims of drug abuse only serves to reinforce the oppressive mechanisms of the State, as well as the control, visibility and limitation of those socially marginalised and, therefore, ‘dangerous’ classes. I intend to focus my remarks on two wider issues. First, on the unmistakable moral contradiction between the constantly increasing social deregulation of economic choices (e.g. working hours) and the equally constant regulation of personal choices. And, second, on the broader right of a person to choose, if he so wishes, the path of (self-)destruction. The first issue is socio-political and directly linked to the continually shifting regulatory frame of the Welfare State which, until recently, seemed to determine the relation of the individual to society. The claim for at least a minimal guarantee against unemployment,

sickness, misery and malnourishment was inscribed at the centre of social and political discourse. And to the extent that the social and financial cost of dealing with dangers appeared too burdensome, it became necessary to constitute rules that would secure against deviation. The right of free agents to toy with danger was, subsequently, questioned. When society is called to foot the bill, it can claim for itself the right to impose certain ‘health and safety’ regulations. This was precisely the logic behind enforcing the use of seat belts. The Social State that cares for all seems to be in decline. The defenders of free-market liberalism are tirelessly preaching that the individual is entirely responsible for his destiny and welfare and that society plays no part in his comfort, except as a fallback. Any financially, productively or developmentally impracticable interventions on behalf of the State and to the aid of lazy, invalid, stupid or just unlucky individuals must be minimised. People, they tell us, cannot achieve salvation unless it comes from their own efforts as free, prudent and responsible agents.

If it is so, or if it must be so—if, in other words, people are asked to face the burden of their existence in solitude and without help, if neither occupation nor housing or medical cover is offered to them—then it is worth asking ourselves on what moral or logical grounds it can be legitimate to prosecute and condemn those who opt for the forbidden fruits of artificial paradises, or look in virtual worlds for the things they are deprived of in the real one as a way of overcoming or even momentarily forgetting their frustration and despair. The proletariat had nothing to lose but its chains. The modern social delinquents have nothing to lose but their growing despair. It is precisely at this point that the profound moral hypocrisy of the ruling cultural model can be witnessed. Society might have in the past abstained from aiding but it equally as much abstained from protecting and subduing. The Social State might have protected and subdued in order to aid. But modern societies seem to subdue without having the slightest intention to aid. People remain within the regulatory constraints of the free market when they starve, but not when they risk self-destruction or death, thus opposing the ruling ethic. The same happens in the army—self-injury is considered a provocative offence— with the only difference that the army, at least, provides a daily meal. Reality resembles a collective enlisting in a chimera of common wellbeing and success that, nonetheless, remains perpetually elusive. Like Tantalus, people are forced to believe in the fruits that they will never manage to touch or taste. Thus, everyone is obliged to look the part of the good citizen, obedient employee and conventional paterfamilias. Even if sick, people must look healthy and act vigorously; even when marginalised, they have to function as if they were members of the society; even if unemployed, they have to protect their strength and fitness in the name of a productive mechanism that has completely forgotten them. The question that we asked at the beginning must, then, be put forth again: how does society constitute and limit its intervention in people’s free choice to self-destruct? And, even more importantly, how can we distinguish between oppressive and prohibitive regulatory condescension (even when benevolent) and repressive cultural totalitarianism? The paradox is interesting: at times when multiculturalism is unconditionally praised, it is only those expressions of cultural practices that are in line with post-modern functional fitnessobsessions that are allowed and promoted. There is nothing peculiar about a society inventing, promoting and favouring certain values and ways of life over others. Liberalism, however, was the first attempt to relativise the validity of society’s own symbolic certainties; this, incidentally, was its biggest historical contribution. The liberal subject is, primarily, entitled to decide in an unrestrained manner and think sacrilegiously. This happens particularly when these choices concern nobody else but the agent himself and his ultimate possession: his own body. It is, then, not by mere chance that even if the social rules of ‘appropriate’ public behaviour are very rigid, regulatory ‘privacy’ appears to be strenuously guarded. Any imaginable self-inflictions, self-indulgences, self-degradations, self-injuries or even suicide remain under the exclusive jurisdiction of

42 Bedeutung

Even if sick, people must look healthy and act vigorously; even when marginalised, they have to function as if they were members of the society; even if unemployed, they have to protect their strength and fitness in the name of a productive mechanism that has completely forgotten them. the individual. All that is required is that others are not taking part, aiding or abetting.

From a different perspective, however, it seems that liberal regimes do not differ all that much from others. Against their own rhetoric, they are obliged to articulate binding regulations and devise symbolic ‘transgressions’ and ‘offences’ in order to cement and reproduce the terms of their own sovereign strategy. And it is in this sense that all organised regimes are, by definition, conformist. The concern of disciplining the individual towards the laws and norms of collective power is always intertwined with a tendency to fetishise prominent value-ridden regulations. A totally permissive power would be a contradictio ad rem. Therefore, what distinguishes liberal authority is neither its leniency nor its discounted discipline: instead, it is the values that it stems from. Instead of tradition, transcendent certainty or cohesive social expression, the permissible and desirable are defined through ‘common sense’, consensus, scientific knowledge, profitability and instrumental weighing of social priorities. This is, then, how an unprecedented fetishisation of functional rationality, longevity, physical potency and mental/emotional stability has surfaced. It is no less than the duty of any wise citizen to maintain and manage his life, his soul, his body and his uncertain future rationally. We may, indeed, be only at the beginning of an ever-safer behavioural conformism. The fate of illegal drugs could soon be shared by substances such as tobacco, alcohol, fatty foods, salt, eggs, Turkish delights; activities such as swimming, climbing, hunting, maybe even riding motorcycles or driving fast cars. Moral pressure is already felt everywhere. Those that are desperate or mentally ill; those who are smokers, drinkers, gluttonous, overweight or unfit—failed in one way or another— produce a curious juxtaposition to the smiley ideal of our new conventional wellbeing. And, whenever and wherever the marks of irrational choices can be externally observed, they produce a distinct stigma. In the coming societies, the mainstream, prudent and fortunate are also happy and successful. And, more than just being so, they must also be visible from afar. Even indirectly, then, we are being driven in the direction of a widespread and generalised moral and aesthetic totalitarianism. Together with the marginalised and desperate people, those that do not conform to the rules and imperatives of this functional rationality tend to be automatically categorised as irrational and rejects and, therefore, negligible, with all the political and ideological consequences that this might carry. When misery, misconduct or lack of self-restraint is considered deviant, or even criminal, it becomes easy to overlook or even blatantly ignore the consequences of the ‘nanny state’. Being miserable is not only aesthetically repulsive and morally condemnable, it is also dangerous for our values and against our Civil Code. The circle is closing in. The best possible world is the one that rejects and punishes those that are not unconditionally convinced of its harmonious necessity.

Philosophy 43

THE POWER

of POWDER: LIFE-FORCE AND MOTILITY

in C U B A N DIVINATION Martin Holbraad

MANA and Tr ansgression

Along with ‘totem’ and ‘taboo’, the Oceanian term ‘mana’ is one of the few words to have crossed over from the language of ethnographic report to the vocabulary of anthropological analysis – and, partly by that virtue, has also managed to lodge itself in the general lexicon of Euro-American intellectual discourse (Bracken 2007). In this sense, the term has become something of an icon of itself. Having translated mana variably, and with vague traction, as ‘lifeforce’, ‘sacred power’, or even ‘energy’1, it was always its transgressions that most impressed anthropologists: its peculiarly double universality, one might say, of semantic breadth (‘mana is everywhere’, said the native) coupled with geographical diffusion (‘mana-terms are everywhere’, replied the anthropologist). Commenting on Marcel Mauss’s General Theory of Magic (2001 [1902-3]), where the ‘category’ of mana was presented, with Kantian overtones, as the condition of possibility for all magic, Claude Lévi-Strauss diagnoses the sources of anthropological fascination with mana in the apparently insoluble antinomies attaching to [it], which struck ethnographers so forcibly, and on which Mauss shed light: force and action; quality and state; substantive, adjective and verb all at once; abstract and concrete; omnipresent and localised. (Lévi-Strauss 1987: 63-4)

Like magic, in other words, mana presents itself as an aberration, since it systematically transgresses distinctions one could be expected to consider axiomatic. It is, to use a mana-term more contemporary than ‘energy’, excessive.

The classic anthropological response to mana has been defensive.2 If, as Lévi-Strauss shows, the problem mana presents is that it transgresses distinctions that are deemed axiomatic, then the strategy for its solution must be to confirm the authority of the axioms by showing how they are nevertheless equipped to ‘explain’ mana. Axioms are, after all, axioms, and should therefore trump any putative transgressions ethnographic exotica such as mana might throw their way. Lévi-Strauss’s own weapon of choice, for example, is the semiotic distinction between signifier and signified. Having noted the ‘apparently insoluble antinomies’ that Mauss identified in mana, Lévi-Strauss goes on to chastise him for nevertheless attempting to find meaning in them – albeit a meaning that is so ‘singularly ambiguous’ (Mauss 2001: 132) as to provide the premise for ontologically transgressive ‘magical propositions’ (156) . If mana consists of a ‘series of fluid notions which merge into each other’ (134), that can only be because, taken in itself, it has no meaning at all. A ‘symbol in its pure state, [and] therefore li-

able to take on any symbolic content whatever’ (LéviStrauss 1987: 64), mana is the ‘floating signifier’ par excellence. In this sense, says Lévi-Strauss, terms like mana are analogous to words such as ‘thing’ or ‘stuff’ – contentless forms that allow us to speak of things about which we may know little (see also Sperber 1974, Boyer 1986). And by this virtue, he argues, they stand at the very beginning of the evolution of human knowledge. At a loss on how to allocate his ‘signifiertotality’ to an as yet unknown ‘signified’, man at the dawn of language finds solace in the sweeper-like quality of mana-terms, whose role is to ‘soak up’ the ‘signifier-surfeit relative to the signifieds to which it can be fitted’ (1987: 62). The implication being, of course, that Polynesians, and other people for whom mana-terms are more salient than words like ‘thing’ are for us, are closer to the dawn of knowledge – which is to say, not quite yet in its bright of day.

Ingenious as it is, the argument is somewhat perverse. For one thing, whatever mana may be, it certainly is not a thingamajig or a whatyoumaycallit to those who invoke it. Lévi-Strauss’s provocation, in this respect, is no more convincing for being intentional. But more importantly for present purposes, we may note also that by mustering the semiotic machinery of signifiers and signifieds, Lévi-Strauss flatly contradicts the transgressive quality of mana in the very effort to account for it. For even if the logical and ontological excesses of mana can be thought pacifically as a ‘float’, such a float traverses the axiomatic division between signifiers and signifieds, which could only be a variant of mana's other famous ‘antinomies’ – abstract versus concrete, quality versus thing, and so on. Explaining mana away in this way may be no crime. Maybe we should just admit that the transgressions of mana are there to be pacified, like the savages who first presented us with them were. In this paper, however, I wish to explore the obverse possibility. Rather than assuming that the task must be to uphold the axioms mana transgresses by showing how they can explain the transgression, my aim is to explore how, in its very transgressions of our axioms, mana may offer occasion to change them – how it may trump them. In other words, if the ‘problem’ of mana—its ‘apparently insoluble antinomies’—is a function of its relationship to our assumptions, who’s to say that it is not those assumptions that require analytical attention rather than, as it was always assumed, mana itself? Who is to say mana could not take the role of axiom in our analytics? (Certainly not the Polynesians.) My focus here will be on mana's transgression of one (putative) axiom in particular: namely, the commonplace assumption that ‘things’ must necessarily be thought of as ontologically distinct from ‘concepts’. Such a move is possible just because the ‘universality’ of mana cuts systematically across this distinction: it is both a thing and a concept (e.g. see Mauss 2001: 1345). So, the question is this. If, as was so widely com-

mented in the literature, mana is both, say, a stone and ritual efficacy—both thing and concept, as we would say—then might thinking through it provide us with an analytical standpoint from which we would no longer need to make this distinction? Might there be a frame for analysis in which mana does not register as an ontological anomaly, as it does when we say— surprised—that it is both thing and concept? Taking a cue from earlier writers who considered mana as just an Oceanian version of a much wider phenomenon, this argument will be made from an otherwise parochial ethnographic standpoint, namely that of Cuban Ifá, a male diviner cult of West African origin that I have been studying in inner-city Havana since 1998. As we shall see, Ifá diviners’ seemingly nebulous appeal to the notion of ‘aché’, on which I focus, displays apparent ‘anomalies’ that are analogous to the ones anthropologists have associated with mana. Aché in Cuban Ifá Divination

Aché is relevant in one way or other to all aspects of Ifá worship – as well as Santería, the other main Yorubabased cult in Cuba, with which Ifá largely shares its cosmology (cf. Brown 2003). Its ‘universality’, in this sense, renders it as much a ‘mana-concept’ as mana itself. By way of illustration consider El Monte, the classic monograph on Afro-Cuban religion by Lydia Cabrera (2000), in which aché is mentioned eleven times, and characterised differently in each one of them. Sometimes Cabrera writes of aché in the abstract as ‘grace’3 (ibid: 16), ‘magical power’ (ibid: 99), ‘all the powers, force, life, the secret of the earth (ibid: 103), or ‘luck’ (ibid: 301). But, elsewhere, aché appears concretely as ‘Orula’s [ie the patron deity of Ifá] grace [kept by the Ifá priest] in his saliva’ (ibid: 106), a ‘powder that belongs exclusively to a deity’ (ibid: 481), or, yet more specifically, as ‘iyefá, the white powder full of virtues which is spread on to Orula’s divining-board’ (ibid: 494). Furthermore, aché appears as something with which deities are born (ibid: 314), or it may inhere in plants (ibid: 113), or be invested on idols through consecration rites (ibid: 103). But rituals themselves may ‘accumulate’ aché through the presence of plenty of initiates (ibid: 108); indeed aché is also the kind of thing that initiates themselves can ‘have’ or ‘give’ (ibid: 108).

Here I focus on the role of aché in the cosmology and practice of Ifá divination. This is hardly arbitrary, since it is mainly as diviners that Ifá initiates (called ‘babalawos’) are distinguished from other Afro-Cuban cult practitioners, including practitioners of Santería, and divination furnishes the basic organising principle for other aspects of worship. Furthermore, in terms of the present argument, it is in divination that abstract and concrete senses of ‘aché’ come together most clearly. Asked how aché relates to divination, babalawos’ initial 46 Bedeutung

response is most often that aché is the power or capacity (in Spanish usually ‘poder’ or ‘facultad’) that enables them to divine in the first place: ‘to divine you must have aché’, they say. In fact, conducting the séance, as well as other rituals, such as consecration, is also said to ‘give’ the babalawo aché, which he may also ‘lose’ if he uses his office to trick people or do gratuitous evil through sorcery. The importance of aché as an enabling condition or force is enshrined in the liturgy of the divinatory séance, with babalawos invoking it by name as part of the various Yoruba incantations that need to be chanted for a successful divination. But while these invocations were usually explained to me in rather vague terms—sometimes as appeals for the aché of ritual ancestors, other times as solicitations of the aché of nature, or of the deities, or of Orula (the patron deity of divination)—there were evidently also senses in which aché was understood much more precisely, to refer specifically to the secret powders that are an indispensable ingredient in just about all Ifá ceremonies, including divination. I shall describe only the uses to which aché-powders are put, and not their ingredients, which babalawos guard closely, since— and this is, really, the point—powders are a principal source of their divinatory powers.

Unlike spirit-mediums and other seers, babalawos divine only with the help of certain consecrated paraphernalia. The method is basically similar to other geomantic systems found throughout sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. Most importantly, at initiation, babalawos receive a divining-board and a number of palm nuts (ikines) of which they use 16 in order to divine for ceremonial occasions from then on. This is done by clutching all 16 nuts with both hands, and then separating most of them off with the right hand so as to leave either one or two nuts in the left. If only one remains, the babalawo marks two lines with his middle and ring finger on a layer of aché-powder, also called iyefá, which is spread on the surface of his divining board. If two nuts are left, he marks a single line with his middle finger. The process is repeated until eight (single or double) marks are made on the board, arranged in two columns of four (referred to as ‘legs’). In what we might call a random way, this yields one of 256 possible divinatory configurations, referred to either in Yoruba as oddu or in Spanish as signos (signs) or letras (verses). Each oddu is connected to a series of myths that are interpreted in various ways during the latter parts of the divinatory séance so as to give pertinent advice to consultants (see Holbraad 2003, 2008b). Practitioners emphasise that all the paraphernalia involved only work, as it were, provided they are properly consecrated during the ceremony of initiation, and this most crucially involves ‘charging’ or ‘loading’ (cargar) each item with aché-powder in secret ways. When I asked what would happen if one were to conduct a divination with ‘jewish’ equipment

(as yet to be consecrated objects are called), babalawos dismissed the idea: Orula ‘does not speak’ with such objects, they said. The notion that Orula literally speaks in divination is important in this context. For the consecration of the palm nuts, in particular, is, in fact, conceptualised as the birth of Orula himself, or, better, the birth of an Orula, since each babalawo has his own, so there are many. As a general principle in the polytheistic cosmology of Ifá and Santería, while deities may be thought of as transcendent beings who reside in the temporal beyond of mythical time and the spatial one of nature or the sky, they are also given a radically immanent role in the form of idols (Bascom 1950, Peel 2003: 94). Unlike Christian icons and the like, these idols, which usually are stones (otá) placed inside decorated pots (soperas), are not taken to ‘represent’ the deity, but rather to be it and are, hence, fed with blood, spoken to and generally taken care of in ritual contexts. So, in this sense, Orula simply is the palm nuts (which, by the way, when not being used to make Orula ‘speak’ in divination, are kept in a clay pot on a shelf in the babalawo’s home).

Connected to this is the idea that the divinatory configurations that the babalawo marks on the powder— the oddu—are, also, considered to be divine beings. The exploits of each individual oddu feature in countless myths, wherein oddu may appear as kings, warriors, tradesmen, animals, etc., or, even, as guises of Orula himself. In fact, on this score, there is a certain amount of ambiguity insofar as babalawos often speak of these divine personages as ‘paths’ of Orula (caminos)—rather than minor deities in their own right—by analogy with the ‘paths’ that other popular deities (orishas) have, each orisha being basically a multiplicity of different ‘aspects’ or ‘avatars’ in Yoruba cosmology (e.g. Bolívar 1994: 27-64). Be that as it may, the point is that there is nothing ‘arbitrary’ about these ‘signs’, as they are often referred to in Spanish (signos). When the babalawo marks the eight single or double marks on the powder of his divining board, the oddu in question is said, literally, to ‘come out’ (salir), or, more actively, to be ‘drawn’ (in the gambling sense – sacar). And there is no mistaking its potency: crouching around the divining board, the babalawos and their consultants are in the presence of a divine being, a symbol that stands for itself if ever there was one (sensu Wagner 1986). The Power of Powder

So, aché is excessive like mana: power and powder, abstract and concrete, concept and thing. But I would argue that this does not index an antinomy, as LéviStrauss would have it. Nor, for that matter, are we faced with an ordinary ambiguity to be compared, for example, with the English concept of love, which can hardly be said to have a single meaning that incorporates filial and erotic senses. For, while babalawos certainly distinguish between the different senses in

which they use the word ‘aché’—no one is confused about the difference between power and powder— they also assume (and, if invited, explicitly draw) a clear logical connection between the two senses. To have the power of aché as a diviner, one must be properly consecrated as a babalawo and this, most crucially, involves receiving and knowing how to use the consecrated equipment, charged with the powder of aché. No powder no power, so to speak. Conversely, the secret knowledge required to prepare aché powders and use them for Ifá is possessed only by babalawos – a term they translate from Yoruba as ‘father of secrets’ (Menéndes 1995: 51). In other words, preparing and using these powders is within the power of babalawos exclusively – so ‘no power no powder’ also.

It is worth being clear about the logical status of this mutual implication, since it goes to the heart of the ‘anomaly’ aché poses – the heart of the problem about concepts and things. For there are two ways of glossing this implication that make it appear quite unanomalous, so to speak, though clearly unusual – or even ‘irrational’, as the old phrase has it (Sperber 1985). The first would be to gloss the implication in causal terms: no powder no power and vice versa, because each is a necessary causal condition for the other. The problem, then, would simply be one of showing why certain people ‘believe’—to use a hackneyed word—in such seemingly strange causal sequences. We can all understand how, say, gunpowder was a necessary condition for the power of the Conquistadors, and how, conversely, the gunpowder’s power was predicated on its Spanish makers’ privileged knowledge of how to produce it. Why might Cuban diviners posit an analogous relationship between their power and their powder, given that no causal efficacy seems ‘actually’ to be involved?

The problem with this causal gloss is that it does violence to the ethnography. For, like all causal sequences, the circular one proposed here is cast in terms of logically contingent relations between discrete elements. On such a view, aché-powders and aché-power are first posited as logically independent from one another and then related ‘externally’ by what philosophers call ‘physical’ necessity. This hardly tallies with what practitioners say. As shown by their reaction to my suggestion that I might start divining with jewish equipment, for them the notion of powerless powder, and of powderless power, is not just untenable as a matter of fact, but rather inconceivable as a matter of principle. A babalawo who hasn’t been properly consecrated with aché powder just isn’t a babalawo. And powder that hasn’t been prepared properly by a babalawo—father of these secrets—just isn’t aché. In other words, the relationship between power and powder is, philosophically speaking, ‘internal’: each is defined in terms of the other. This suggests an alternative gloss on the mutual implication, in terms of logical, rather than physical, ne-

Philosophy 47

To have the power of aché as a diviner, one must be properly consecrated as a babalawo and this, most crucially, involves receiving and knowing how to use the consecrated equipment, charged with the powder of aché. No powder no power, so to speak. Conversely, the secret knowledge required to prepare aché powders and use them for Ifá is possessed only by babalawos – a term they translate from Yoruba as‘ father of secrets’. In other words, preparing and using these powders is within the power of babalawos exclusively – so‘no power no powder’also.

cessity. On this view, the slogan ‘no powder no power’ (and its converse) is to be taken as what philosophers call ‘analytic’, of the same order as statements like ‘the Queen is Head of State’, or ‘2 + 2 = 4’. Just like 2 isn’t 2 unless added to itself it gives 4, so a babalawo isn’t what he is (i.e. doesn’t have the power of aché) unless he has been consecrated with the powder, and vice versa. The question, then, would be what it is about the meaning of power and powder in this context that makes them mutually definable in this way. Why, in other words, do Cuban diviners consider these two concepts mutually constitutive while we, presumably, do not?

Persuasive though it may seem—inasmuch as it reflects the internal relationship of power and powder in Ifá—this analysis in terms of logical necessity is just as inadequate to the ethnography as the causal account, though for opposite reasons. The problem here is that by treating the relationship between powder and power as an analytic implication, one effectively ignores its irreducibly practical character. True, for a babalawo it is enough to contemplate what his power means to know that it requires his consecration with aché powder (and vice versa). But, the point is that this logical operation presupposes a practical one, since it is only because aché powder is actually efficacious that it can be used to produce babalawos ‘with aché’ (i.e. with power). Babalawos only count as such, provided they have been consecrated with powder, not because the meaning of powder logically implies their power (like the meaning of ‘Queen’ implies being Head of State), but because the powder itself gives them power. (And vice versa for powder.) In other words, the difference between the relationship of powder and power and that described by an ordinary analytic statement is that while the latter states a conceptual identity, the former implies a real transference (of powder that gives power and of power that gives powder).4

At this point my account of this dilemma will appear contradictory. It seems as if what I’ve done is complain of the causal analysis that it distorts the logical implication that binds power and powder, only to reject the logical analysis on the grounds that it distorts the causal character of the implication. Which is it: logical or causal? But I would argue that this appearance of contradiction is a consequence of the Procrustean character of the analytical choices we seem to have at our disposal. Indeed, we may note here that the distinction between causal connection and logical identity, which renders aché contradictory, is corollary to the distinction between things and concepts. It is precisely because aché does not fall tidily into either of the latter categories that it does not lend itself to analysis in terms of either of the former relations. If aché powder and aché power were ‘things’, then they could be conceived of as discrete variables: which, as we have seen, they cannot be. If they were concepts, then their internal connection would be a purely deductive mat-

ter, whereas, as we have seen, it is not. So, properly speaking, aché is neither thing nor concept but rather a bit of both: an indiscrete thing and a concept that literally transfers itself. Clearly, for as long as we insist on thinking in these terms, we can only articulate aché as a paradox, as Lévi-Strauss and others did.

The strategy of this paper is based on the idea that this negative analytical predicament actually prescribes a positive methodology that may lead to an analytical resolution. If aché is to be taken as both what we call a concept and what we call a thing, then it follows that the connection between the two sides of its ‘double aspect’, so to speak, is not arbitrary. That is to say, while the logical status of aché is still obscure due to its apparent ‘excess’, we do know one thing: that its abstract meaning as ‘power’ is internally related to its concrete nature as powder. So the meaning of aché (the ‘concept’) is literally constituted by the things to which it would otherwise be assumed simply to ‘apply’. Its intension is modified by its extension, if you like, by what one might call a relation of ‘hyper-metonymy’ (imagine a crown that didn’t just signify royalty, but actually constituted it – a ‘magical’ crown, then).

On this hypothesis, which—as we have seen—is motivated by the ethnography, the task is to understand aché in its very excess. And the opportunity for doing so is there, in the ethnography of the thing itself, in powder. For, with the axiom of concept versus thing discarded, the ethnography of things like powder can no longer be assumed to be about ‘interpreting’ them in terms of the meanings the people we study ‘attach to’ them. Things may carry their own context within themselves, as Marilyn Strathern has put it, writing of other things (Strathern 1990). So the method aché dictates for itself could be captured by the old phenomenological injunction: ‘back to the things themselves’. But only with the proviso that this is not because somehow the level of things and of people’s ‘practical’ engagement with them is more ‘primordial’ than the level of theoretical manipulation of concepts, as some anthropological versions of phenomenology would sometimes have it. Rather, because the internal relationship between concepts and things implies that in some important sense things just are concepts. So, our job is to think through them, as it were, rather than about them (cf Henare et al 2007). In particular, this method allows us to determine the logical status of the ‘hyper-metonymy’ relating powder to power in Ifá, by attending to the role of the ‘thing itself’— powder—in Ifá divination. So, what makes powder power in Ifá? The beginning of a reply may be given by making explicit what divinatory power consists in for babalawos. As we saw, the difference between unbaptised and consecrated equipment is that Orula only speaks through the latter, and this is because he is deemed to be the latter: when he speaks, he is 16 palm nuts being cast into oddu-configurations, marked on the powder of the Philosophy 49

divining board; and those marks themselves are Orula’s oddu, not just their representations. So, the divinatory power of the babalawos can fairly be glossed as their ability to render Orula and his oddu immanent during the consultation: an otherwise transcendent deity, who is imagined to have lived and died many generations ago in ‘Africa’, and who now is deemed to reside in natural features, the sky, or mythic time as what one might call an ‘ex-human’, is made temporarily present during the séance. Divinatory power, then, most crucially involves the capacity to engender what we might call ‘ontological leaps’ on the part of the deity: from transcendence to immanence or, more simply, from radical absence (the ‘beyond’) to presence. (These leaps are the polytheistic counterpart to the epistemological ‘leaps of faith’ associated with monotheism, though even God—in Christianity—needed His Son as a one-off ontological transgression, or at least He thought we did).

Before going on to explain how aché-powders may be said to condition such leaps, as the logic of ‘no powder no power’ would imply, it is necessary to comment on the problem they present – the ‘problem of transcendence’. The problem, which babalawos have the power to solve, amounts to the danger that Orula and the rest of the orishas might remain in a state of transcendence, permanently separated from humans in the ‘beyond’. Such a state of affairs would render all aspects of Ifá worship impossible, including not only divination, but also initiation, consecration, sacrifice, and magic, all of which are premised on the idea that deities and humans can enter into relations with each other (Orula’s speech to the consultant through the oracle, mortals asking the deities for divine favour, feeding them blood, bringing divine power to bear on personal affairs in sorcery, etc.). My argument depends on the idea that, despite its theological twist, this problem is familiar at a more abstract philosophical level as the classic problem of ‘individualism’. The question, which goes back at least to the social contract theorists of the 17th and 18th centuries, is how from a position of an aggregate of individuals, separate and self-contained units that are transcendent with respect to one another, we might arrive at a position where these units are formed in relation to each other – how, in human terms, ‘society’ is created out of ‘individuals’. A peculiarly anthropological dissolution of this question goes back to at least Mauss, and has in recent years become particularly associated with Melanesia, due to the work of Marilyn Strathern (1988, 1995; see also Dumont 1970, Marriott 1979). That is to say that the question of how relations might be engendered out of individuals is itself arbitrary, for one could perfectly well ask how individuals are engendered out of relations. Indeed, anthropologically speaking, phenomena like magic, or gifting, or certain kinds of tribal leadership, or caste, or hunting and shamanism, or affinity, or, 50 Bedeutung

even, anthropological analysis itself, will be endlessly misunderstood unless we perform exactly this kind of analytical reversal, viewing relations as logically primitive, and the terms they relate (‘individuals’) as derivative effects.

While I cannot comment on gifting, caste, affinity and so forth, I would suggest that, with regard to Ifá divination, the choice between giving priority to relations over individuals or vice versa is, at least, problematic and, ultimately, false. Crudely put, if one were to say that the problem of transcendence in Ifá is not really a problem because deities and humans mutually constitute each other in the relationships that divination implies, one would be denying the very condition that leads clients to the diviners in the first place, namely that the deities are transcendent most of the time, so that the diviners’ powers are necessary in order to elicit them into relation. In this sense, relation and transcendence are symmetrical in Ifá cosmology, so a choice of giving priority to one over the other must be false (cf. Højer 2005). Therefore, the analytical question is how relation and transcendence might themselves be related, other than by antinomy.

Powder gives us the answer, and to see this we may pay attention to its role in divination. As we saw, spread on the surface of the divining board, powder provides the backdrop upon which the oddu, thought of as deitysigns, ‘come out’. In this most crucial of senses, then, powder is the catalyst of divinatory power: i.e., the capacity to make Orula ‘come out’ and ‘speak’ through his oddu. Considered prosaically, powder is able to do this due to its pervious character, as a collection of unstructured particles – its pure multiplicity, so to speak. In marking the oddu on the board, the babalawo’s fingers are able to draw the configuration just to the extent that the ‘intensive’ capacity of powder to be moved (displaced like Archimedean bathwater) allows them to do so. The extensive movement of the oddu as it appears on the board, then, presupposes the intensive mobility of powder as the medium upon which it is registered. Of course, physically speaking, this is always the case – movement presupposes movement. Even if the babalawo marked the oddu with a pencil on a piece of paper, the lead would only leave a mark provided the paper particles reacted accordingly. But the point is that powder renders the motile premise of the oddu’s revelation explicit, there for all to see by means of a simple figure-ground reversal: oddu figures are revealed as a temporary displacement of their ground, the powder.5 This suggests a logical reversal that goes to the heart of the problem of transcendence. If we take seriously babalawos’ contention that the oddu just are the marks they make on aché-powder—as we must if we are intent on thinking through these things—then the constitution of deities as displacements of powder tells us something pretty important about the premises of Ifá cosmology: that these deities are to be thought

of neither as individual entities nor as relations, but rather as motions. Indeed, beyond the role of powder, this accords with the mechanics by which the oddu get determined in the first place, since, as we saw, Orula himself is a plural object: 16 palm nuts that only ‘speak’ through motion – the diviners’ cast. This also accords with the otherwise perplexing idea that all orishas manifest themselves as one of a number of ‘paths’, as I mentioned. If the oddu of Orula, as well as the orishas more generally, just are motions (or ‘paths’), then the apparent antinomy of giving logical priority to transcendence over relation or vice versa is resolved. In a logical universe where motion is primitive, what looks like transcendence becomes distance and what looks like relation becomes proximity. Motions through and through, the deities are never divorced from humans, stuck in the ‘beyond’ of transcendence – to say so would be to place limits on the logical priority of motion. Conversely, humans’ relations with motile deities cannot be taken for granted, as the Melanesianist image would have it, for there is no guarantee that the deities’ movement will be elicited in the right direction, as it were. The relation, then, is potential, and it is just this potential—the potential of directed movement—that aché-powder guarantees, as a solution to the genuine problem of the distance deities must traverse in order to be rendered present in divination.

The notion of potentiality here, and particularly that of potential relation, is closely akin to arguments presented by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Marcio Goldman, on the role of ‘virtuality’ in Amazonian and Afro-Brazilian religious cosmologies respectively (Viveiros de Castro 1998a, 1998b, 2002, 2005, 2007; Goldman 2003, 2005, ed.). Drawing on the Deleuzian conceptions of ‘virtuality’, ‘difference’, and ‘becoming’ (e.g. Deleuze 1994), their analysis of these cosmologies turns on a figure-ground reversal that is closely analogous to the one powder just performed for us here. Here I want to pause to compare in some detail the ‘motile’ analysis that I have offered for my Afro-Cuban material with Viveiros de Castro and Goldman’s parallel ‘virtualist’ analyses of Amazonian and Afro-Brazilian cases, since, as we shall see, such a comparison serves to sharpen the analytical purchase of my argument considerably. Their point (and I paraphrase wildly across texts for the sake of brevity) can be summarised like this. Anthropologists tend to describe the cosmologies they study as systems of classification. The assumption is that cosmologies are populated by different entities (gods, ancestors, spirits, and so on) that relate to one another in different ways (hierarchically, genealogically, temperamentally, or whatever). Cosmologies can be ‘charted’ by placing these entities in relation to each other in conceptual space—or, indeed, on paper—according to their differences, characterising their relations in the spaces that are provided—

notionally or graphically—between them. Now, try imagining a figure-ground reversal on such a chart, as in an Escher sketch. Cosmological elements now feature not as self-identical marks relating to each other externally in space (the ‘scheme’, the ‘paper’), but are rather extended across the spaces that previously divided them. What was assumed to be a scheme of entities, now appears as a field of relations, so that the differences that previously distinguished one cosmological element from another ‘extensively’ now become ‘intensive’ characteristics of those elements themselves, now conceived of as ‘self-differentiating’ relations. Showing that such a ‘plane of immanence’ (2007: 155) underlies pan-Amerindian notions of myth, spirits, and shamanism, Viveiros de Castro writes: [T]he actants of origin myths are defined by their intrinsic capacity to be something else; in this sense, each mythic being differs infinitely from itself, given that it is posited by mythic discourse only to be substituted, that is, transformed. It is this self-difference which defines a ‘spirit,’ and which makes all mythic beings into ‘spirits’ too. […] In sum, myth posits an ontological regime commanded by a fluent intensive difference which incides on each point of a heterogenic continuum, where transformation is anterior to form, relation is superior to terms, and interval is interior to being. (2007: 158)

While Viveiros de Castro does not add the priority of motion over rest to his list, it is clear that such a logical reversal, which I have argued is necessary to make sense of the ‘intrinsic capacity’ of Ifá deities to move from transcendence to immanence, is confluent with his argument. Of course, a full discussion of these analogies and their possible breakdowns would involve far-reaching comparisons between Amerindian ‘animism’ and Afro-American ‘polytheism’ – ‘spirits’ versus ‘deities’, so to speak. Here, I shall only make use of the analogy with Viveiros de Castro’s argument on virtuality to make two points—one positive and one negative—that may help to sharpen my own argument on motility. Both points pertain to the question as to how Viveiros de Castro’s use of the concept of ‘intensive difference’ fairs in relation to the problem of deities’ transcendence: which, as we have seen, aché has the power to solve.

Firstly, it will be noted that the point of analogy between the virtual and the motile lies precisely in the idea of potentiality, which is a common corollary of both (see also Holbraad 2008a, 2008b). As we have seen, if aché forces us to conceive of the oddu of Ifá as motions, it also allows us to think of the oddu as having the potential to become immanent in divination, so as to enter into relations with the babalawos that invoke them. In this sense, being motions, oddu are Philosophy 51

[...] Relation and transcendence are symmetrical in Ifรก cosmology, so a choice of giving priority to one over the other must be false. Therefore, the analytical question is how relation and transcendence might themselves be related, other than by antinomy. Powder gives us the answer, and to see this we may pay attention to its role in divination.

also ‘potential relations’. Analogously, if for Viveiros de Castro spirits are virtual in the sense that they are ‘self-differential’, then they too should be construed as potential relations inasmuch as their self-difference just amounts to their inherent potential to ‘be something other than themselves’ (Lévy-Bruhl’s 1926: 76). Indeed, more than just analogous, these two senses of ‘potential relation’ stand in a relationship of logical implication. For the oddu’s potential to enter into relations with humans is premised on what Viveiros de Castro calls ‘self-difference’. Oddu do not simply ‘travel’ from the beyond of mythical transcendence to the here of the divining board, for their ‘motion’ is not one of a self-identical entity. As we have seen, the capacity of oddu to reveal themselves in divination implies a transformation, which resembles the one Viveiros de Castro envisages for Amerindian spirits. Be they conceived as ‘paths’ of Orula or as deities in their own right, the oddu are ‘posited’ as characters that reside somewhere in the beyond as variable mythical guises, only to be ‘substituted’ during the divinatory séance, first as configurations of the palm-nuts and then as ‘signs’ on the aché powder. In other words, oddu can relate to ‘others’ just because they can ‘other’ themselves, inasmuch as their motion from transcendence to immanence is premised on their capacity to ‘selfdifferentiate’.

The upshot of this is that the motion of the oddu as they ‘come out’ on the divining board should not be conceived in spatial terms at all, but rather in ontological ones. Aché, then, is the space in which ontological transformations happen, and its role on the divining board as a ‘register’ (registro6) is also ‘ontological’ through and through. In the motile universe of Ifá, the very act of registration on the surface of the divining board—as the babalawo’s fingers move through the powder to reveal the oddu—is not an ex post facto representation of an already pertaining state of affairs, but rather an act of ontological transformation in its own right, for it is in this act that the oddu is ‘substituted’ as an immanent presence in the séance. Indeed such an analysis of aché as the premise/catalyst of transformation can arguably be generalised in Ifá, beyond the immediate context of divination. For present purposes the most pertinent ethnographic evidence for this has to do with the role of aché, as conceived by practitioners on this broader cosmological scale. Marcio Goldman’s characterisation of the notion of ‘axé’ in Candomblé, the Afro-Brazilian cousin of Cuban Santería, is pertinent: [Candomblé cosmology involves] a kind of monism that supposes a single essence that diversifies into various modalities that constitute all that exists or that can exist in the universe. This essence, which is clearly similar to the Melanesian notion of mana […], is referred to in Candomblé as axé. The diversification of axé is initially manifested in the divinities themselves, the

Orixás, since each of them incarnates a specific modality of the general essence. In turn, each thing or being that exists in the world – stones, plants, animals, human beings, etc… - ‘belongs’ to one of these Orixás to the extent that they share with him this essence, which is at the same time both general and individual. (Goldman nd: 1-2, my translation from the original Portuguese)

Although babalawos in Cuba have not given me such a concerted cosmogony regarding aché (their varied accounts tend to focus on the generative role of ‘major’ orishas at the beginnings of time), Goldman’s synthesis does reflect babalawos’ common observation that the orishas and their worldly ‘belongings’ ‘have aché’. Indeed, from the point of view of such statements, Goldman’s paradoxical appeal to the notion of ‘essence’ (e.g. ‘both general and individual’) is perhaps unnecessary. Building on my earlier argument about aché in divination, an alternative analysis would posit aché not as diversified essence, but as the premise of diversification itself.7 Orishas ‘have aché’ precisely inasmuch as they are able, qua motions, rather than entities or relations, to ‘become’ the various elements of the world: stones, plants, animals, humans… These, in turn, ‘belong’ to the orishas just in the sense that they are them: they are varied outcomes of the orisha’s motile becoming, and hence ‘have aché’ also.

This, arguably, is the significance of the ritual requirement in Ifá (and Santería) that all consecrated items be physically ‘loaded’ with aché-powders. This includes not only babalawos’ Orula deity and the divinatory objects that go with it (see above) but, also, all the other deities practitioners receive as ‘loaded’ idols at different stages of their initiatory career (Holbraad 2008a), as well as the initiates themselves, who are ‘marked’ with aché-powders at various parts of their body during initiation. Just as the powder babalawos use on their divining boards is powerful as a surface on which Orula’s oddu can ‘come out’, so consecrated idols and initiates are powerful (‘have aché’) as conduits that render the presence of the relevant orishas immanent, particularly as and when this is required in ritual. In light of our earlier analysis of the role of powder as the pervious ‘ground’ on which deities manifest as immanent ‘figures’, it makes sense that powder should also be the ‘active ingredient’, so to speak, of consecration. Admittedly, its role as motile ground here is—literally—not as graphic. Powder is not itself marked, but rather is either ‘loaded’ in small portions into secret cavities of the idol-deities, or used to ‘mark’ the bodies of neophytes. One is tempted to say that the power of these pinches of aché-powder is metonymic, though only on the proviso that this is a ‘hyper-metonymy’ in a strict and pertinent sense (see also above). Unlike ordinary metonymy in which a part comes to stand, symbolically, for the whole (e.g. Crown for King), the pinches of powder that are used Philosophy 53

in consecration do not merely ‘stand for’ the whole from which they are partitioned but, rather, they reconstitute it as wholes in their own right. This follows from a second, ‘prosaic’, property of powder. As a pure multiplicity of particles, powder is not only pervious, as we saw, but also ‘partible’: even pinches of powder constitute wholes, inasmuch as no qualitative difference (other than quantity!) distinguishes them from the wholes from which they were detached (cf. Reed 2007). So, even though in consecration powder does not actually display motility as it does in divination, it does retain literally the property (viz. perviousness) that would allow motile deities to be rendered immanent, and thus is powerful in the same sense – albeit, of course, in principle.

Be that as it may, it is clear that in consecration powder is power in the same sense as it is in divination: namely, as a catalyst for the ontological transformation of the orishas from a state of transcendence in the ‘beyond’ to a state of immanence in the consecrated items. This brings us back to a second point of comparison with Viveiros de Castro’s notion of ‘self-difference’. For it should be noted, that the kind of ontological transformation that is at stake in Ifá is in significant ways different from the ones Viveiros de Castro had in mind in the Amerindian context. One could visualise the contrast in terms of a spatial metaphor of ‘horizontal’ versus ‘vertical’ transformations (Hugh-Jones 1996, Pedersen 2001). Viewed in this way, Viveiros de Castro’s account of spirits is ‘horizontal’ inasmuch as it is essentially anarchic. Spirits are conceived as endlessly multiplying, like ‘forests of mirrors’, and their multiplicity is irreducibly qualitative inasmuch as it implies ‘modulations’ of ‘form’ (2007: 161) – of ‘ontic’ form, we might say, mutating from species to species, from animal to human, minuteness to monstrosity. Ifá, on the other hand, in accordance with its imperial associations in West Africa (eg see Bascom 1991, Peel 2003), presents the question of deities’ potential for transformation in irreducibly vertical or, as practitioners also put it, ‘hierarchical’ terms. What I have in mind here is not primarily the much debated ranking of deities in the form of a systematic ‘pantheon’, whose historical evolution, as David Brown has argued convincingly, is heavily bound up with Christian and other ‘theologising’ influences both in Africa and in Cuba (Brown 2003: 114-128). Rather, what makes Ifá ‘vertical’ is the cosmological premise upon which such rankings are conceived, namely the idea that deities can be characterised by their degree of ‘distance’ from the human world. Brown writes: [R]ankings along the spirit–matter continuum can be flexible and ambiguous. For example, Echu is, in fact, “everywhere and sees everything”: he is a “warrior” of the highly “material” street and forest; he is also right up there as “God’s secretary”; at the same time, he is not merely a “mischievous” orisha but is, in one road [viz. 54 Bedeutung

‘path’], Alosí, the Devil, who manifests himself in this world […]. Obatalá [sky deity, patron of peace], too, defies ontological confinement. Numerous relatively more “material” and more “spiritual” Obatalás, who are “younger” warrior types or “older” sage types, respectively, populate this continuum (2003: 127, references omitted).

So if the orishas are as multiple as Amazonian spirits, each of their ‘paths’ taking a different ontic form, their multiplicity is nevertheless ‘vertically’ distributed. They differ from the Amazonian paradigm in that their ontic transformations also imply shifts in what one might call ontological status, since their multiple becoming is inflected hierarchically as a ‘continuum’ of relatively proximate and relatively distant ‘manifestations’. Indeed, the distinction between shifts of ontic form and of ontological status allows us to conceptualise the difference between (horizontal) shamanism and divination as the respective modes of divine disclosure in Amazonia and in Ifá. The shamanic ability to ‘call spirits’, explains Viveiros de Castro, is a matter of ‘vision’: where non-shamans just see animals in the forest, for example, shamans see spirits (Viveiros de Castro 2007: 159-160). This makes sense, since the ‘problem’ that spirits present to humans is that there is more to them than meets the non-shamanic eye – qua intensive differences, they are always more than the sum of their ontic snap-shot appearances (e.g. the forest animals, which are just a form of their becoming). The problem with the orishas, on the other hand, is not so much that they are invisible but, rather, that they are not fully ‘here’ in the first place. After all, insofar as the orishas are visible at all, it takes no special powers to see them. The idol-deities in which they manifest ceremonially, the natural features of which they are patrons, the devotees whose bodies they possess during Santería rituals, as well as the aché powder that Orula marks during divination – all these concretions are there for all to see. The problem is how to elicit the deities’ presence in these concrete forms – how to elicit immanence, having posited transcendence. One might say that if the shaman’s task is to see what is present, the diviner’s is to render present what is seen. It follows that, while Viveiros de Castro’s notion of intensive difference is, as already shown, pre-supposed by the idea of motility, such a notion is nevertheless insufficient on its own to account for the peculiar verticality of Ifá deities’ ontological transformations – the problem of transcendence (see also Holbraad 2004, Holbraad and Willerslev 2007). True, such a notion is, in this respect, an improvement on the Melanesianist concept of the ‘relation’, which precludes the possibility of ontological distance altogether. Nevertheless, the distance admitted by the ‘potential’ relations of the virtual is not of a kind that allows us fully to make sense of deities’ transcendence. A matter of

ontic form, rather than ontological status, the potentiality of virtual spirits is that of transforming themselves horizontally into what they are not (‘becomingother’), whereas the vertical axis of transcendence to immanence implies transformations that are also constituted as shifts between orders of otherness (‘becoming-other-kinds-of-other’, if you like).

The idea of motility, I argue, is able to capture these differences between difference. By distributing virtual becomings across a continuum of motion, with its peculiar capacity to ‘self-scale’in terms of the formal relations of ‘distance’ and ‘proximity’ (which, as we have seen, the notion of direction implies), we effectively add a second dimension to the concept of ‘becoming’ itself. Perhaps, the clearest way to express this is in terms of the structuralist distinction between ‘syntagmatic’ and ‘paradigmatic’ relations. Virtual continua relate differences paradigmatically. Motile ones relate them syntagmatically, which is to say that they relate them ordinally, in sequences that provide them direction in terms of asymmetrical (positional) relations of ‘before’ and ‘after’. So, no less ‘intensive’ than their virtual counterparts, motile differences are nevertheless more sophisticated from a logical point of view, in that they are able to render two dimensions of difference—paradigmatic ‘form’ and syntagmatic ‘status’ (or ‘position’)—at once. Both dimensions are needed in order to articulate the problem of transcendence, which, as we have seen, is so central to Ifá cosmology. Motile deities’ transformations allow them to enter into relations with humans. And the fact that these transformations scale themselves as changes of ontological status shows that deity–human relations are not given as cosmological fait accompli, but rather have to be accomplished by eliciting the deities from the relative ontological distance of transcendence to the relative proximity of immanence. Conclusion: Motile Things Are Motile Concepts

So, the answer to the question as to why aché powder is power is that, in Ifá, powder provides the condition under which deities—ex-human, mythical, of the ‘beyond’—can manifest themselves immanently and, thus, enter into relations with the everyday world of the living. If deities’ moves to immanence are a function of their motility, then aché powder is an essential ingredient for eliciting such moves, since it allows them to be articulated as such – articulated quite literally, as we have seen, on the surface of the divining board as a series of intensive motions (inward displacements) of powder that reveal the ‘figures’ of Orula’s oddu.

By way of conclusion, however, we may note that the analytical dividends of this argument go beyond the immediate concern with aché to the broader question that motivated it, namely the relationship between concepts and things. To see this, consider the strategy

of the argument itself. As a response to earlier failures to account for mana’s systematic transgressions of the ontological distinction between concepts and things, my suggestion from the outset was that an ethnographic analysis of the ‘excess’ of aché might provide a conceptual frame within which such transgressions may no longer register as logical absurdities. Driven ethnographically by the logical connection practitioners of Ifá draw between power and powder, I proposed to experiment with the idea that the conceptual properties of aché (as power) could be delineated with reference to its concrete characteristics (as powder) – thus, methodologically, revoking the axiomatic distinction between concepts and things. This line of inquiry led to the analytics of ‘motility’ which, as we saw, render sensible the otherwise absurd-sounding claim that powder is indeed power and vice versa. One may want to wonder at the circularity of this argument. After all, if the ethnographic analysis of aché had to begin from the stipulation that concepts and things may be identical, then how can it also purport to show it? The circularity involved, however, is arguably virtuous. Rescinding the ontological distinction between concepts and things in order to show that the concept of power is identical to powder would be viciously circular if all it had produced were a confirmation of its own premise. However, the approach has offered more than that. Proceeding from a stipulative identification of concepts with things, it has yielded the analytics of motility. The circle is virtuous precisely because motility does not merely presuppose a collapse of the concept/thing divide but, rather, provides its logical justification. So, if the initial stipulation allowed us, like Wittgenstein’s ladder, to get to the concept of motility, then that concept in turn allows us to discard the ladder of mere stipulation, and accept a novel logical framework that denies the axiomatic dichotomy of concepts versus things.

For the conclusion can only be this. If the motility of powder dissolves the problem of transcendence versus immanence for babalawos, then motility also dissolves the problem of concept versus thing for us. And this, because the latter problem is just an instance of the former. After all, the notion of transcendence is just a way of expressing the very idea of ontological separation. And ontological separation is what a non-motile logic posits at the hiatus that is supposed to divide concepts from things. Motility, on the other hand, turns on the idea that ontological differences do not amount to separations at all, but rather to intensive and ‘self-scaling’ transformations. Thus, just like in a motile logical universe powder can be power, deities can be marks on the divining board, and so forth, so concepts and things can also be each other. All it takes is to stop thinking of concepts and things as selfidentical entities, and start imagining them as selfdifferential motions.

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ENDNOTES 1 Such terms of translation are effective inasmuch they are the closest modern Euro-Americans come to transgressing their own axioms – asking, say, a Foucauldian about ‘power’ is comfortably comparable to asking a Polynesian about mana. However, the notion that such terms, in themselves, may also be theoretically illuminating is misleading, since they do ‘no more than provide difficult native concepts with an equally mysterious gloss’ (Viveiros de Castro 1998a: 79; see also Keesing 1984). 2 In a longer version of the present paper (Holbraad 2007) I trace in some detail the development of the anthropological debate about mana, from the 19th century onwards. 3 Translations from the Spanish text are mine. 4 Hubert and Mauss express exactly this point when they write that the idea of mana ‘not only transforms magical judgements into analytical judgements but converts them from a priori to a posteriori arguments, since the idea dominates and conditions all experience’ (Mauss 2001: 156). Saul Kripke put the possibility of a posteriori analyticity on the philosophers’ table almost a century later, though not much to our use here since mana-terms like aché are anything but ‘rigid designators’ – as the terms of a posteriori analytic truths, for him, must be (eg ‘water is H2O’ – 1980: 48-9). 5 I have made a parallel argument regarding the role of money in Ifá cosmology (Holbraad 2005). 6 The act of consulting the oracle is commonly referred to as ‘looking at one’s self with Orula’ or ‘registering one’s self with Orula” (mirarse con Orula, registrarse con Orula). 7 See Keesing 1984 and 1985 for a critique of the tendency in Melanesian ethnography to view mana as a “diffuse substance”, as opposed to “a process or a state” (1985: 203). The tendency, he argues, is characteristic “of European, not native, theologians” (ibid.), by which he means anthropologists.

references Bascom, W. R. (1950), ‘The focus of Cuban Santeria’, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 6: 64-68 ——— (1991), Ifa Divination: Communication Between Gods and Men in West Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press Bolívar A., N. (1994), Los Orishas en Cuba. La Habana: PM Ediciones Boyer, P. (1986), ‘The “empty” concepts of traditional thinking: a semantic and pragmatic description’, Man (N.S.) 21: 50-64 Bracken, C. (2007), Magical Criticism: the Recourse of Savage Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Brown, D. (2003), Santería Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press Cabrera, L. (2000), El Monte. Miami: Ediciones Universal

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Deleuze, G. (1994), Difference and Repetition (trans. P. Patton). London: Athlone Press Dumont, L. (1970), Homo Hierarchicus: the Caste System and its Implications. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson Goldman, M. (2003), ‘Observações sobre o sincretismo Afro-Brasileiro’, Kàwé Pesquisa. Revista Anual do Núcleo de Estudos Afro-Baianos Regionais da Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz I (1): 132-137 ——— (2005), ‘Formas do saber e modos do ser: observações sobre multiplicidade e ontologia no candomblé’, Religião & Sociedade 25, 102-20 ——— (nd), ‘Serie, estrutura, devir: Lévy-Bruhl, Deleuze e o Candomblé’, paper presented in round table dicussion on "A Antropologia a Favor da Diferença, ou, Para que Servem os Autores 'Menores'", at XXVIII Encontro Anual da Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Ciências Sociais, 2004. Henare, A., Holbraad, M. & Wastell, S. (eds.) (2007), Thinking through things: theorising artefacts ethnographically. London: Routledge Holbraad, M. (2003), ‘Estimando a necessidade: os oráculos de ifá e a verdade em Havana’, Mana 9(2): 39-77 ——— (2004), Response to Bruno Latour’s ‘Thou shall not freeze-frame’ (available on-line: http://www.abaete. wikia.com/wiki/Response_to_Bruno_Latour’s_%22Thou_shall_not_freeze-frame%22_(Martin_Holbraad), accessed 20 January 2009) ——— (2005), ‘Expending multiplicity: money in Cuban Ifá cults’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11(2): 231-54 ——— (2007), ‘The power of powder: multiplicity and motion in the divinatory cosmology of Cuban Ifá (or mana again)’, in A. Henare, M. Holbraad & S. Wastell (eds.), Thinking through things : theorising artefacts ethnographically. London: Routledge, pp 189-225. ——— (2008a), ‘Relationships in motion: oracular recruitment in Cuban Ifá cults’, Systèmes de Pensée en Afrique Noire 18: 219-264 ——— (2008b), ‘Definitive evidence, from Cuban gods’, in The Objects of Evidence, M. Engelke (ed.), Special Issue of JRAI (N.S.): S93-S109 Holbraad, M. & Willerslev, R. (2007), Transcendental perspectivism: anonymous viewpoints from Inner Asia, Inner Asia 9: 191-207 Hugh-Jones, S. (1996), ‘Shamans, prophets, priests and pastors’, in Nicholas Thomas & Caroline Humphrey (eds.) Shamanism, History and the State, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, pp. 32-75 Højer, L. (2005), ‘The anti-social contract: enmity and suspicion in Northern Mongolia’, Cambridge Anthropology 25(1) Keesing, R. (1984), ‘Rethinking mana’, Journal of Anthropological Research 40: 137-156 ——— (1985), ‘Conventional metaphors and anthropological metaphysics: the problematic of cultural translation’, Journal of Anthropological Research 41: 201-217 Kripke, S. (1980), Naming and Necessity. Oxford: Blackwell Lévi-Strauss, C. (1987), [1950] Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss (trans. F. Barker). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Lévy-Bruhl, L. (1926), How Natives Think (trans. L.A. Clare). London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. McKim, M. (1979), ‘Hindu Transactions: Diversity without Dualism’ in B. Kapferer (ed.) Transaction and Meaning: Directions in the Anthropology of Human Issues. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, pp.109-142 Mauss, M. (2001), [Hubert & Mauss 1902-3], A General Theory of Magic (trans. by Robert Brain). London: Routledge Classics Menéndez V., Lazara (1995), ‘Un cake para Obatalá?!’, Temas 4 38-51 Palmié, S. (2002), Wizards and Scientists: Explorations in Afro-Cuban Modernity and Tradition. Durham: Duke University Press Pedersen, M. (2001), ‘Totemism, animism and North Asian indigenous ontologies’, JRAI 7(3) 411-427 Peel, J.D.Y. (2003), Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba. Bloomington: Indiana University Press Reed, A. (2007), ‘”Smuk is king”: the action of cigarettes in a Papua New Guinea prison’, in A. Henare, M. Holbraad & S. Wastell (eds.), Thinking through things : theorising artefacts ethnographically. London: Routledge, pp 3246 Sperber, D. (1974), Rethinking Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ——— (1985), On Anthropological Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Strathern, M. (1988), The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia. Berkeley: University of California Press ——— (1990) ‘Artefacts of history: events and the interpretation of images’. In J. Siikala (ed.) Culture and History in the Pacific. Helsinki: The Finnish Anthropological Society, pp. 25-44 ——— (1995), The Relation. Cambridge: Prickly Pear Press Viveiros de Castro, E. (1998a), ‘Cosmological Perspectivism in Amazonia and Elsewhere’, 4 lectures delivered 17 February – 10 March at Dept. of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge ——— (1998b), ‘Cosmological deixis and Amerindian perspectivism’, JRAI 4(3): 469-88 ——— (2002), ‘O nativo relativo’, Mana 8(1): 113-148 ——— (2005) ‘The gift and the given: three nano-essays on kinship and magic’, in Sandra Bamford & James Leach (eds.). Genealogy beyond kinship: sequence, transmission, and essence in ethnography and social theory. Oxford: Berghahn Books ——— (2007), ‘The crystal forest: notes on the ontology of Amerindian spirits’, Inner Asia 9(2): 153-172 Wagner, R. (1986), Symbols That Stand for Themselves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Philosophy 57

WHAT IS THE HOLE INSIDE THE HOLE: ON DAVID LYNCH'S INLAND EMPIRE

Simon Critchley Jamieson Webster

There comes a point in time when the formal hiatus between knowledge and truth makes itself materially felt. But where, when? At least in Inland Empire it concerns the question of wives and whores, children and bastards, mothers and fathers. What is, to put it one way, the hole inside the hole? It has been said that the life of a child is the death of its parents. Perhaps, here, in this film, every possible reversal finds its moment of truth. A child is being killed. A father is being beaten. A whore is the condition of absolute freedom. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s strange what love does. So strange.

here am I? Where is the key? I gave it to you. What’s wrong with me? Do you know what whores do? Yes, they fuck. I’ll tell you what I want. Fine.

This is the only question in the movie whose answer can be known: do you know what whores do? Yes. They fuck. All other demands for knowledge are left unanswered. The whore, face obscured, anonymous, doesn’t have to ask anyone anxiously if he can look at her and tell her if he’s known her before. The whore has known everyone and no one. She is safe in her anonymity. She is protected. There is little room to fall. This film, is it about marriage? Your husband, he is involved? A little boy went out to play. When he opened his door he saw the world when he passed through he caused a reflection and evil was born and followed the boy. Evil was born. (Sinnerman, where you gonna run to) A little girl went out to play, lost in the market place, as if half born. Then, not through the market place, but through the alley behind the market place, this you see, is the way to the past. (Please hide me lord) It isn’t something you remember. Forgetfulness it happens to us all. Where was I? Is there a murder in the film? Brutal fucking murder. (Don’t you know I need you, rock) I can’t remember if it is today or yesterday or tomorrow. I suppose if it was 9:45 I would think it was after midnight. These times recur in the film, as empty markers against which the recurrence of timelessness winds like a snake. If today was tomorrow you wouldn’t even remember that you owed something on an unpaid bill? Do you know what debts you hold? Actions do have consequences, such is the dreadful utilitarian law of life. And yet, there is the magic. If it were tomorrow you would be sitting over there. Do you see? She will, but not until it’s all over. Brutal fucking murder. (All on that day) What is time? Accursed time, with its before and after, its relentless succession of nows. What if yesterday were tomorrow and today yesterday and tomorrow today? Imagine. Perhaps the whore knows something more about this. Perhaps it is his wife. Whorish othertime. For that we would need an act of grace. Unforeseeable. We would need an actor with a porn-star name like Nikki Grace (Laura Dern). You have everything you need to soar back to the top and stay perched there. Hollywood. Where stars make dreams and dreams make stars. Eventually these stars fall, not like scales from eyes but eyes that fall like scales. Are you able to be true to hubby with a wolf in the den? That is all we demand of you. If I don’t kill you, her husband will. Her husband is the most powerful guy around. He knows everything. I could tell you stories that would curl your hair and kill your head. So listen to me when I tell you, around Nikki, keep it in your pants. But you have to admit, she’s got a nice ass. On High in Blue Tomorrows. First scene. What do you want? I want to apologise? The things you said weren’t the truth? Were they the truth? Are you sorry? Why are you crying? I’m so sorry. Look in the other room. Someone is there at the back of the sound stage in Paramount Studios, just next door to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard. It’s Laura Dern/ Nikki Grace/Susan Blue/whoever/HCE/all the other women, from later on, from when the curse of time is lifted. Let the identifications roll. Down the rabbit hole. Life & Death 61

There’s a rumour about a movie, they say. This film is actually a remake from an unfinished film. Something happened. Something happened inside the story, inside a hole inside the story and the two lead actors were murdered. Brutal fucking murder. It’s a Polish gypsy folktale called Vier Sieben, 47, the room number of the wise rabbits. Sometimes someone is not told the whole story. The producers of the movie know this. Who are the producers? We don’t know. Is Nikki’s Polish husband secretly financing the film and deliberately trying to debase his wife, to turn her into a whore and kill her? At least in this way, he can desire her. But then that can’t be entirely true. In this movie, it is always Nikki who desires, a forbidden desire. Each and everyone. Splitting of time- splitting of love and desire- an unpaid debt, a crime. Police station - I’ve been hypnotized or something, I’m going to kill someone. Who? I don’t know. Who hypnotized you? I saw him looking at me once when I looked around the bar and he then moved his hands and he said that I wouldn’t know who it was. How are you going to kill this person? With a screwdriver. Your wife? I’ve been with her since I was a little boy? Nothing little about you now. Why are you doing this? Don’t play dumb. I have a husband, you have a wife and kids… I never met you before. I didn’t know you before. I had this feeling, you've had it too, don’t you? I can’t afford to. All I see from here is blue tomorrows. Are you enjoying yourself? There is a vast network, an ocean of possibilities. Such is enjoyment. I like dogs, I used to raise rabbits, I’ve always loved animals. Their nature, how they think. They can reason their way out of problems, watch them think through the trickiest situations. Can I borrow a few bucks? I can’t afford to. (It’s funny in ways you don’t expect). Husband and Devon – I want to hold you close. Sometimes people don’t say exactly what they mean and you have been guilty of this all evening. I will mean everything I say. My wife is not a free agent. I don’t allow her that. The bonds of marriage are real bonds. The vows we take, we honour and enforce them. For ourselves, by ourselves. If necessary they are enforced for us. Either way she is bound. There are consequences to one’s actions and there will for certain be consequences for wrong actions. Dark they would be and inescapable. Why instigate a need to suffer? Such is the wish in the dream. Such is the hole in the hole. Let’s negate for a time the implacable truth that the mother is certain and the father is not. An old story about one always half-told: Mater semper certa; pater est quem nuptiae demonstrant (Mother is always certain; the father is whom the marriage shows). Inland empire- the father is certain and the wife that I love is also my whore that I desire. How nice it is on high in blue tomorrows. You have nothing to worry about now, you dying lady. Devon hits on Nikki, then we switch to a scene in the movie of the two of them caressing. As Billy Side and Susan Blue? It is unclear. I won’t fall in love with you. Uncut. Are you two happy? The question of happiness is always dark and inescapable. But why instigate a need to suffer? Enjoyment is a vast network of possibilities. Cut to another scene. What? Something has happened. I think my husband knows. He will kill you and me. Damn, this sounds like dialogue from our script. At this point and from this point on, Nikki and Susan begin to blur. What the bloody hell is going on? Cut - We don’t know the real reason why On High in Blue Tomorrows wasn’t finished. Stories grow out of the imagination surrounded by these screwball stories. We shouldn’t give them credence… unless they are true. 62 Bedeutung

Cut – They fuck in real life with the husband/producer looking on at them, but no one is in their place, they cannot stay in their place. Later, she will come to look on the adulterous bed from the exact place of her husband, in the hallway, through the alleyway. He will lie down where she is, or is it where he was? These things are never clear. It is better. The whole story cannot be told. Look at me. Remember that thing that happened in the story from yesterday, but I know it’s tomorrow. That scene where I was parked in the alley way. This is the way to the past. It’s a scene we did yesterday in the alley and I see this writing on metal and I start remembering something. This whole thing starts flooding in, this memory, and I start to remember, I don’t know what it is. It’s me. Nikki. That doesn’t make any sense. It’s me, Devon, it’s Nikki. Look at me you fucker. Please, look at me. Look at me, please, and tell me if you’ve known me before. Anxiety signals the approach of the new. Axx oNN - The axiom of the unintelligible. She goes in through the door. Time fractures backwards and forwards and she meets up in earlier scene. She runs to the door and goes into the house with her husband in the window. She goes in door 1358, in an old 1950s style room. Billy presses his face against the window, but he can’t see her, doesn’t know her. The window goes dark then we switch to a street-scape. She is in the Inland Empire. The Inland Empire is at the back of the sound stage. We know for the first time it is the Inland Empire, just at the back of Hollywood. Always been there. Who knew? She goes into room full of women. What do they have in common? They all fucked Devon/Billy. The look on her face, pleasure, horror, some combination of the two. This face, her look, looking on, will return later. Who the hell are you? Look at us and tell us if you’ve known us before. There are two obvious meanings of ‘know’ in the movie, epistemic and fuckaesthetic, Did he do that thing, that little shaking thing, while he was, you know… wasn’t that great. Yeah. I let him do anything. It’s strange what love does. So strange. In the future, you’ll be dreaming. The kind of sleep where you open your eyes and someone familiar will be there. Cut - Poland. Whores. Lost Girl (Karolina Gruszka). Do you want to see? Then burn a hole with a cigarette in the silk. Look through the hole. Primal scene? The hole in the sheet. Your virgin wife? Your female patient? It’s just silk. It’s just a hole. Sometimes a hole is just a hole. She’s in some shithole in the Inland Empire. Where? Pomona? San Bernardino? Who cares. She burns a hole in the silk. She looks through. Polish whore or a woman who can’t give a man children. I’m not who you think I am I’ll never let you have her, never. Man beats whore. We learn the time is 9:45, but as we learnt in the earlier scene with the amazing Grace Zabriskie, it could be after midnight. The wise rabbits burn bright candles held high on seven-branch candelabra (we exaggerate). Cut - She goes upstairs as a new persona, brutalized, debased, castrating woman, marked with a tattoo on the back of her hand, with the initials L.B. The rage. The reversal of identifications. They are moving now. They are dancing. She meets the analyst who is a rabbit wearing a human disguise. You go down the rabbit hole and meet a rabbit. Who did you fucking expect? God almighty? I don’t really understand what I’m doing here. So they told me you could help me, so I guess I’ll just tell you the thing. There was this man I once knew, his name was, doesn’t matter, lot of guys change, they don’t change but they reveal what they really are. It’s an old story. This guy he revealed something looking back on it, all along it was being revealed, he was planning something with me in mind…. When I get mad I really get mad. I gouged a man’s eye out when I was fifteen he was trying to Life & Death 63

rape me had his thing out and was pushing my legs apart. I got my finger in his eye. What a man you are, crying like a baby. He could still see me with his one eye, grabbing his nuts and tearing at him, crying like a little baby holding his nuts till the ambulance come. What happened? He come to be reaping what he been sowing. That’s some pretty heavy shit he’s been sowing. Cut - She stares at cigarette and burned silk. All the girls again (it is said there is no such thing as All the Women): I thought you would last… I saw it coming… I thought he was the one you know… so where he’s gone… find someone else… not easy when you feel like shit… oh baby (laugh)… tits and ass (showing her tits)…sweet. All dance. The girls, the past lovers, the whores, arrive on the scene to mark the unfolding of the story between Susan Blue/Nikki Grace and Billy’s wife who will stab her with the screwdriver. To stab the woman who your husband betrayed you with is also to stab yourself. And so she did. They are as two punished. Why? That other woman is always there in wedlock. Why do women always insist on unraveling the details of a man’s previous lovers? Hearing them speak about him, every little detail, that shaking thing before he, you know… Is it a dream? A nightmare? Why instigate the need to suffer? So much feminine masochism, Mr. Lynch. Cut - Back in the Inland Empire. Impoverished desperate couple. Feeling of violence. She tells him, I’m pregnant. She calls the rabbits from the Inland Empire. Yes, she calls the rabbits. She says, ‘Billy?’ (canned laughter). Through silk again. Back with the analyst. I seen him coming at me with a crow bar once. I guess he figures I was two-timing him and I was coming home we were shacked up at the time and he was waiting for me in the half-light. Waiting for me to come home, worked himself into some kind of a frenzy. I see this shape burst out of the chair, crow bar going up, I scream and turn, fucking crow bar smashes into that door, cheap piece of shit, it just splinters like glass. I don’t take this kind of behavior. I see what this fucker was up to. Bam! I kick him in the nuts so fast they crawl up into his brain for refuge and he goes down like a two-dollar whore. Bullshit telling me he loves me. Were you, in fact, seeing another man? (First time the analyst speaks. He has a way. How good of him to point out her indiscretions also, where are you Nikki Grace?) I was screwing a couple of guys for drinks, no big deal. This one guy he was kind of cute, had dick like a rhinoceros, fuck the shit out of you I tell you what, he’d buy me a couple of drinks after, we talk and he’s tell me about the town he grew up in all the little girls he’d fuck, chemical factory putting so much shit in the air you couldn’t think straight, lot of crazy shit going on there, weird dreams, seeing things that wasn’t there. So one time this little girl was staring off at something and starts screaming and the people come to her and ask what’s wrong and she says she sees the end of the world all fire and smoke and bloodrain, you know, like they say, the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Cut - Look at me and tell me if you’ve known me before? Yes, we will do that. Husband spills ketchup on stomach where the woman stabs herself with the screwdriver. Time she stops. Time she stopped. Cast out this wicked dream that seized my heart. Billy’s wife screwdriver in hand, stabs herself. Who is she? He said that I wouldn’t know who it was. Cut - Who are those people? Hot dogs. The situation is becoming dangerous. Give me that hammer. There is no toilet paper in the Inland Empire. They are a group that performs in traveling shows in the Baltic region. What’s that got to do with you? I will take care of the animals. It was said that I have a way with animals. I’m sure he does. I’m sure this husband has a way with 64 Bedeutung

animals. Cut from animal to analyst - Went to some Eastern Europe shithole with the circus. Carnies, gypsies, conmen, a real fucking ball of shit. There was this guy who would start talking, real regular talking up the crowd and they would push in closer, he did some sort of thing on people. They called him the Phantom. He got in a bar room fight at night. Circus clowns. So when they take him down to the station he disappeared. This is the kind of shit I’m talking about. He was a marine from North Carolina, he had a sister with one leg, she had a car stick for the other one. She killed three kids in the first grade. This is the kind of shit. Fucking funny. People. All got their own peculiarities, own way of livin’. Cut – L.A. at Billy’s house with his wife. What are you doing here? Something’s wrong, bad wrong, do you feel it? Sue? Billy, do you love me? Don’t you remember anything, how it was? Billy, something’s wrong. I love you Billy. Wife slaps her. Sue, go away. (Flips into a rage, like the woman with the analyst. Gnashing of teeth). I don’t care, it’s something more. I don’t care, it’s something more. Back in the Inland Empire. I came about an unpaid bill that needs paying. Alright. Do you know a man who lives here? Do you know him? What do you want? There is an unpaid bill that needs paying. You already said that. Do you know that man who lives next door. Crimp is the name. Funny name, Crimp. The imp of the perverse. Cut – Crimp. Man with a lightbulb in his mouth and a screwdriver on a small table. Isn’t he the Phantom? The one who hypnotized her? Cut - There is someone there. I have to tell you. There is someone. Brings in the husband. Do you recognize her? I don’t see her. You understand she sent for you. (The Lost Girl). I don’t know where I am; I don’t know where I am. I hear her now. You don’t see her. The horse was taken to the well. Take the pistol. Let’s go! Right away, it’s after midnight. Girl disappears… a ghost… she’s already been murdered. The three Poles merge into the three rabbits. I’m going to find out one day. Where was I? This isn’t the way it was. (canned laughter). It had something to do with the telling of time…. Can we lift the curse of time? Major cut/jump to Hollywood Boulevard – Where stars make dreams and dreams make stars. Two Nikkis/Susans/L.B.s staring at each other: the one from the analyst’s room, the other from the Inland Empire. We hear a scream like in a horror film. On Hollywood Boulevard with all the whores. ‘I’m a whore. Where am I? I’m a freak.’ She laughs mockingly. Looking at herself across the street laughing at herself. AXX oNN – Billy/Devon’s wife is stalking her. She’s going to fucking kill me. Runs upstairs at club. Back at the analyst’s office - I don’t know what I’m doing here. There was this man I once knew. I’m trying to tell you so you’ll understand how it went. I don’t know what was before or after. I don’t know what happened first and it kind of laid a mindfuck on me. My husband he’s fucking hiding something. Acting all weird before he left. He was talking this foreign talk and telling loud fucking stories. Cut – Husband beats her…. I’m not who you think I am. Are you listening to me? I know for a fact that I can’t father children. Brutal fucking murder. Woman with child. A son. We suppose it is the son. The son who is not the son of the father, a whoreson, a dead son. What makes a father a father? Bastard. She doesn’t know the husband at the moment he decides that he knows that she’s a whore. His certainty is a brutality. I mean everything I say. Her not knowing… I can’t say. His face all red, eyes bugging out. I figured one day I’d just wake up and find out what the hell yesterday was all about. I’m not too keen on thinking about tomorrow and today is slipping by. I Life & Death 65

guess after my son died I went into a bad time where I was watching everything go around me while I was standing in the middle, like in a dark theater, before they bring the lights up. I’m sitting there wondering how can this be. Phone rings…. Hello. Yeah still here. (She has a screwdriver). I don’t think it will be much longer now. Yeah. The horse to the well. Yeah. She’s around here someplace that’s for sure. Billy’s/Devon’s Wife takes screwdriver from Nikki and stabs her. Punished. For being a whore. Finally. Runs off. There are consequences to one’s actions and there will for certain be consequences for wrong actions. Dark they would be and inescapable. Why instigate a need to suffer? Why? There’s a question. Axiom of the unintelligible. Falls to ground on Hollywood Boulevard next to a black woman and black man with an Asian girl. You dying lady. What you say about Pomona? You asked about the bus. Can’t get no bus to Pomona. You can get the bus for Pomona here if you get on the subway first. I never can get no bus. You can go all around Hollywood from Hollywood and Vine and you can get to Pomona for $3.50. I never heard of no bus there. I went last summer to visit my friend her name is Niko (not Nikki). I stayed for two weeks. My cousin comes from Pomona. What time is it? I don’t know. It’s after midnight. After midnight? It could be 9.45. My friend Niko in Pomona has a blond wig. She wears it at parties, she’s all on drugs and turning tricks, but she looks very good in her blond wig, just like a movie star. Even girls fall in love with her in her blond star wig. She blows kisses and laughs… but she has got a hole in her vagina wall. She has torn a hole into her intestine from her vagina. The hole inside the hole. Baby, don’t tell us this shit. She has seen a doctor but it is too expensive and now she knows how her time has run out. She’ll score a few more times and then, like that, she will stay at home with her monkey. She has a pet monkey. This monkey shit everywhere and she doesn’t care. It screams like it’s in a horror movie. But there are those who are good with animals, who have a way with animals. They can reason their way out of the trickiest of situations and then shit everywhere. It’s okay, you dying is all. You saw the light. It burns bright in heaven. No more blue tomorrows. You on high now. Camera pulls back and up. Director yells, ‘Cut… and print it’. Bravo. What’s the matter Nikki? You were wonderful… The Lost Girl, the one who was killed by her husband, sees Nikki on TV. Nikki sees herself on the screen in the theater talking to the analyst about how her son died. She’s standing in the dark theater seeing herself talking about standing in the middle of a dark theater, everything going around, time spins, identifications dance, her in the middle, before they bring the lights up. Time is folding back on itself. Time it stopped. Time she stopped. Phone rings, It’s the conversation again. The horse to the well. The analyst goes up a staircase… AXXoNN is on the analyst’s door. The axiom of the unintelligible leads back to the Inland Empire through a rabbit hole. She opens a drawer next to the bed. The bed from the scene of adultery. Takes the pistol. It’s L.B. and she’s not messing around. Poland and Inland Empire collide. She is going down a long corridor with the gun, into Room 47, Vier Sieben. She shoots the man from Poland. She shoots the Phantom. She shoots her husband. Superimposed on his face, a grotesque female face. The imago. Hers? It is the mother behind the father who refuses that father as a husband and the husband who refuses his wife for his mother. It’s an old story: where you love you cannot desire, where you desire you cannot love. Perhaps there is something in the sexual drive that will not allow for complete satisfaction. Who said that? Perhaps there is just a loop, a short circuit of the debased and the forbidden, the debased woman for the man, the forbidden man for the woman. Deadlock. Or wedlock. Cast out this wicked dream that seized my heart. 66 Bedeutung

Rabbits. The rabbits live down their hole in room 47. Blue light, blue tomorrows. She meets the Lost Girl who’s been crying from the beginning. They kiss. A long fucking kiss. The other woman. Nikki/Susan disappears. The Lost Girl smiles. The door opens and she leaves. She leaves room 47. She runs down corridor. Out. She greets her husband and her dead son that glimmered in the analysis. He takes up his role as father, the father is whom the marriage shows. The Lost Girl comes home in the end. Happy family? Happy ending? Suturing the hole? Eat your heart out. The horse goes to the well, but you can’t make it drink. Not one drop. Subtitle: A Woman in Trouble. Amazing Grace. What once was lost now is found. Never Inland Empire. Look. Nikki sees herself across the room. (If it were tomorrow you would be sitting over there). Fade out. End. Closing credits. In the whorehouse in Pomona. No, in the mansion in Hollywood. Same difference. Enter the Phantom’s sister with one leg. Castration. Sweet. Niko with monkey. Shit all over the floor. Sweet. They all dance around Nikki. Grace. Oh Sinnerman, where you gonna run to? Sinnerman, where you gonna run to? All on that day Well I run to the rock, please hide me, rock I run to the rock, please hide me, Lord All on that day But the rock cried out, I can't hide you The rock cried out, I can't hide you The rock cried out, I ain't gonna hide you guy All on that day So I run to the Lord, please hide me Lord Don't you see me prayin'? Don't you see me down here prayin'? But the Lord said, go to the devil The Lord said, go to the devil He said, go to the devil All on that day So I ran to the devil, he was waitin' I ran to the devil, he was waitin' All on that day I cried Power. Bring Down Power.

Life & Death 67

Current Affairs.

P O L I S , S TA T E , COSMOPOLIS

Costas Douzinas

Truth begins with an axiom of truth. It begins with a decision to say that an event has taken place.

Alain Badiou

ATHENS Rising: Cosmopolitanism or the Polis?

Europe has created two distinct and enduring political-spatial entities: the self-governing city and the sovereign territorial state. The rise of neo-liberal capitalism, its global penetration and political effects gave the impression that the territorial state was on the way out. Over the last few months, however, the AngloSaxon model of capitalism, deregulated, free-market, greedy, based on financial gambling, cheap credit and disregard for any value other than profit has come to a crashing end. Bail outs, nationalisation, regulation have delivered a huge blow to free market idolarty. The rise of neo-liberal capitalism coincided with the emergence of two important juridico-political trends: cosmopolitanism and the post-democratic turn in Western politics. Is there a link between recent moralistic ideology, greedy economic policies and biopolitical governmentality? My answer is a clear yes. Their combined action has led to the gradual decline of the modernist edifice of domestic and international politics, based on nation-states, respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity. Now that the economic model has come crashing down, what is happening to its symbolic order? I will examine this question through an exploration of the relationship between space and politics. Cosmopolitanism has been challenging the sovereignty of the nation-state from a globalist perspective while new types of protest have been reasserting the political importance of urban space against the lethargy of formal politics. The first part discusses the way in which a philosophical tradition that started in classical Athens with Diogenes the Cynic and Zeno the Stoic has come to represent late modern ‘capitalism with a human face’. The second part moves to the December 2008 insurrection in Athens and examines it as a new form of urban politics. Space, law, democr acy

Democracy as political form and citizenship as the specifically modern subjectivity could only be developed through a strong link between power and space. Modern politics has always operated within a limited territory controlled by single authority and modern legitimacy has depended on spatial ordering. All major political forms, dynastic royalty (principle of inheritance and personification of a population), nationalism (common characteristics of people cohabiting in a particular territory) and representative democracy (the will of nation) combine power and place. Their exclusive and exclusionary link (i.e. that each nation should have its own territorial state and each state should consist of one dominant nation) was necessary in order to sustain the cultural, religious and national identity necessary for the operation of democracy. The nation could be constructed only within a delimited territory which 72 Bedeutung

became its hallowed home worth dying for. Territorial nationalism was the precondition for the rise of democracy. For a simple majority to become an acceptable form of rule, people must feel that similarities with their neighbours are greater than their obvious economic, class or cultural differences. Nationalism provided the basic cultural homogeneity necessary for the rise of democracy. When such initial homogeneity does not exist, the introduction of democratic procedures explodes the conflicts of wider society and can lead to genocidal wars. This is what happened after the collapse of Yugoslavia. Secondly, national territoriality linked with urbanisation led to the creation of the specifically modern subjectivity. Capitalist accumulation, enterprise and industrialisation depend of large-scale moves of people from the countryside to the cities where they become the labour force necessary for capitalism. These mass moves can succeed local identities must be refashioned in a dialectical confrontation with wider normative claims, primarily those of nationalism and political participation in the nation-state. These normative claims allowed parochial agrarian consciousness to be challenged or alienated in Hegelian terms in order to return to itself in the richer form of the subject-citizen of modern democracy.

Both processed were enabled by the jurisdictionally, that is territorially, organised national law. Rules regulating capitalist production and commodity exchange, including the protection of property, contract and the development of legal and corporate personality developed first in urban centres. Only later did civic rules emerge, mainly the creation of civil and political rights, which completed the creation of the modern subject and citizen and empowered the nascent nation-states to challenge the major urban and trade centres for hegemony. Territoriality, a spatially demarcated and organised nation-state and a national legal system are necessary preconditions for democracy and citizenship. Is this intricate connection between power and place now coming under threat? My answer is yes and no. Let me examine first sovereignty’s retreat. International lawyers claim that a new international norm called ‘humanity’s law’ has emerged. It brings together the old law of war (traditionally called ‘humanitarian’ law) and human rights law limiting state action both in periods of conflict and during peacetime. Humanity’s law is not restricted spatially or temporally like international law and does not respect natural frontiers. Temporally, no distinction can be drawn between war and peace. War is peace; the merging of war and police action has been declared permanent. Again, while in Nuremberg and Tokyo international criminal justice was invoked after the end of hostilities against the loser, now it is invoked before or during the war and becomes part of the conflict. The linear temporality of modernity is replaced by the symbolic ever-presence of the concept.

Spatially, emphasis has shifted from the protection of national borders to the upholding of certain (legal) concepts and values, key amongst them humanitarianism, security and freedom. Let me examine them briefly.

The international legal system was the consequence of exclusive national control over state territory which marked early modernity. Intervention by the ‘international community’ or states into the territory of another state was allowed in an extremely small and strictly controlled set of circumstances. Authorisation by the United Nations Security Council to stop or prevent wars was the main lawful casus belli. Unlawful war or ‘crimes against peace’ were considered until a few years ago as the most odious attack on international legality. The frontier of the modern state is not a disputed region or zone of control but just a line. Things are culturally and socially different on two sides. The new world order has undermined this clear line however and sets cultural and social specificities against the common principles of ‘humanity’s law’. Humanitarian sanctions and wars are triggered by attacks on human rights, the instability of populations through mass migration, ethnic cleansing, atrocities but also increasingly by natural disasters as the Burma floods indicated. While the premodern nomos of the earth was based on the control of land, the modern on control of sea lanes and trade, the postmodern nomos is planetary: it is spatially boundless, operating on horizontal planes, its cartographic principle conceptual rather than geographic. ‘National security’ was the privileged term recognising state discretion to override policies and rights when it feels threatened by real or imaginary enemies. Now it has been replaced by ‘human’ insecurity as the basis for engagement in domestic and global politics. The substitution of human insecurity for national security hugely expands the scope of state action both domestically and internationally. In the climate of fear of terrorists, criminals and other rogues assiduously cultivated by western governments, personal insecurity is an ever-present existential condition offering open-ended authorisation for all kinds of preventive and protective action.

Liberation, finally, is carried out through military occupation and economic penetration and restructuring. In Iraq we have both: Paul Bremer, the first post-war viceroy, imposed what the Economist called a ‘capitalist dream regime’. It included ‘the full privatisation of public enterprises, full ownership rights by foreign firms of Iraqi businesses, full repatriation of foreign profits…the opening of Iraq’s banks to foreign control…the elimination of nearly all trade barriers’ the imposition of a regressive flat tax, the outlawing of strikes and the restriction of trade union rights. The World Bank, the IMF and the WTO follow a softer approach. The ‘economic restructuring’ conditions imposed on developing states in loan and aid

agreements constrain the ability of developing states to make decisions about wage levels, all aspects of welfare provision and services, constitutional reform and levels of unemployment. Similar policies are followed by the World Trade Organisation and its TRIPS and GATS agreements. The investment liberalisation agenda puts trans-national corporations in a dominant position, promoting private interests and denying local people the information while imposing strict fiscal policies and the privatisation of public services and utilities.

The promise to the developing world that the violent or voluntary adoption of the neo-liberal capitalism, of good governance and limited rights will inexorably lead to Western economic standards is fraudulent. Historically, the Western ability to turn the protection of formal rights into a limited guarantee of material, economic and social rights was based on huge transfers from the colonies to the metropolis. While universal morality militates in favour of reverse flows, Western policies on development aid and Third World debt, indicate that this is not politically feasible. As Immanuel Wallerstein put it, ‘if all humans have equal rights, and all the peoples have equal rights, then we cannot maintain the kind of inegalitarian system that the capitalist world-economy has always been and always will be.’ When the unbridgeablility of the gap between the missionary statements on equality and dignity and the bleak reality of obscene inequality becomes apparent, human rights — rather than the elimination of war — will lead to new and uncontrollable types of tension and conflict. Spanish soldiers met the advancing Napoleonic armies, shouting ‘Down with freedom!’ It is not difficult to imagine people meeting the ‘peacekeepers’ of the New Times with cries of ‘Down with human rights!’ Human rights and humanitarianism have become tools of power’s biopolitical operation best captured in the Swiftian modest proposal of our times presented in a recent article in the Harvard Journal of Human Rights: ‘individuals may be killed intentionally if their expected death is compensated [sic] by more than an equivalent expected increase in enjoyment of human rights.’ In this humanitarian calculus, enjoyment trumps death; the target of power is precisely life. You are killed in order to live happily ever after. The emergence of this new order parallels early capitalism. First, a global legal regime of neo-liberal investment, trade, aid and intellectual property was created and later global civic rules, ethics, semiotics and lingua franca followed aiming to complete neo-liberal capitalist integration. Robert Cooper has called it the ‘voluntary imperialism’ of the global economy. It combines voracious capitalism and humanitarianism.

The delinking of politics and place means that national democracy is on the retreat but no cosmopolitan democracy is likely to emerge. As we know from debates around the European Union, no common demos exists in the world, no global social or culturCurrent Affairs 73

Humanity remains philosophically an abstract universal and historically a strategy of ontological ordering rather than a quality shared. It cannot replace the normative localisation that the nation performed in early modernity. Cosmopolitan citizenship is an oxymoronic concept.

al homogeneity to support democracy. The idea of a ‘constitutional patriotism’ has failed in Europe and is not even a starter internationally. Secondly, the belief that national identities will be sublated in a dialectical or agonistic struggle with the universality of humanity is plainly wrong. Humanity remains philosophically an abstract universal and historically a strategy of ontological ordering rather than a quality shared. It cannot replace the normative localisation that the nation performed in early modernity. Cosmopolitan citizenship is an oxymoronic concept.

According to Carl Schmitt, the Sovereign decides exceptionally and performatively about the exception, suspends the law in order to save it. In our recent wars, in a modification of Schmitt’s law, the United States placed itself in the position of global Sovereign by suspending international law. There is more. The exception does not just create the rule; it also constitutes an imaginary global space over which the Sovereign will rule, it creates the terrain of its application, its law and its space. This is the symbolic space of a global community organised according to the effectiveness of planetary technology, a failing world capitalism and a legal system given to the endless circulation without significance or aim, a combination of the nihilism of shock and awe and capitalism. In this sense, recent wars marked the return and condensation of sovereignty, but perhaps a bastard sovereignty without sovereignty, which acts without end, except that of endless circulation and expansion. In a historical reversal, an Emperor is emerging but the Empire is still under construction and indeed may fail. An Emperor without Empire is our world. Despite differences in content, colonialism and cosmopolitanism form a continuum, episodes in the same drama, which started with the great discoveries of the new world and is now carried out in the streets of Iraq: bringing civilisation to the barbarians. The claim to spread Reason and Christianity gave the western empires their sense of superiority and their universalising impetus. The urge is still there; the ideas have been redefined but the belief in the universality of our worldview remains as strong as that of the colonialists. There is little difference between imposing reason and good governance or between proselytising for Christianity and human rights. They are both part of the cultural package of the West, aggressive and redemptive at the same time.

We can conclude that cosmopolitanism, human rights, international law etc do not constitute the symbolic but the imaginary order of the world. They are the replacement rather than the companion or precondition of democracy. A planetary democracy is impossible since abstract spatial ordering cannot replace the democracies of place. On the contrary, ‘humanity’s law’ subjects democracies to the dictates of oligarchic international and hegemonic elites. Place remains the privileged site and stake of politics and power. What is happening

to the city, the second location for bringing together space and politics? Let me turn to events in December 2008 in Athens. Polis Rising or The Athens Events

Few events in recent Greek history have created such an avalanche of hermeneutical ingenuity and analytical perspicacity as the widespread protests of December 2008. The catalyst for the insurrection was the unprovoked police killing of 15-year-old pupil Alexis Grigoropoulos on December 6 and the spontaneous reaction to the homicide and extensive police brutality and violence. The first wave of events started on the night of the killing and continued until the New Year celebrations. A number of University buildings in central Athens were occupied and demonstrations broke out all over Greece, including forty provincial towns which had never experienced such protests. The activities were varied: marches to local police stations, to Parliament and various Ministries were daily repeated. Other forms were more imaginative: they included sitins, street performances, interruption of theatres and cinemas to call for audience solidarity, the raising of a banner on Acropolis calling for resistance and the burning of the Christmas tree in the central Syntagma square. In the early days, shops, banks and cars were attacked in central Athens and damage to property was reported. Violence subsided later and took mainly the form of stone (and some petrol bomb) throwing by the protesters and extensive teargas use by the riot police. In an unprecedented move, large numbers of secondary school pupils aged 12 to 18 took to the streets supported by their parents. It was quite characteristic that despite the condemnation of the protests by most political parties and commentators, well over 50% of the population supported the protest. Many varied and often contradictory causes have been put forward for this explosion of pupils and students. They are primarily economic (youth and graduate unemployment, underemployment, neo-liberal economic measures, general economic uncertainty) but also political (persistent and unpunished corruption, reform of social security, multiple failures of the educational system, sclerosis of the semi-dynastic political system), cultural (a pervasive protest mentality, anti-statism but also the weakness of ‘civil society’) or ideological (perseverance of anarchism and leftism, toleration of antinomianism). Yet despite the extensive commentary in foreign and Greek media, the prominent reaction of intellectuals, journalists and politicians has been one of shock and bemusement, incomprehension mixed with incredulity. When journalists and politicians conclude either with the condemnation of ‘raw violence’ or with a shocked recognition of the ‘sudden’ awakening of hitherto apolitical teenagers, they admit to a certain

failure of political imagination. If the events have tested the ability of society and state to react to its multiple failures they have also put the interpretative ability and analytical acumen of political and social scientists on the line. The events lack the standard markers of political legibility and in this sense cannot be easily integrated into existing analytical frames. No political organisation or other agent directed the insurrection, no single ideology motivated it, most importantly no overwhelming demand was put forward to be negotiated, conceded or rejected by the government. This is what mostly riled the commentators. Against the abundance of interpretations canvassed, against the desperate attempt to squeeze a modicum of explanation from participants, a sense of bewilderment followed the lack of a ‘clear’ political agenda. The question ‘what do the kids want?’ permeates the responses of the commentators mimicking Freud’s famous quip ‘what does the woman want?’ In both cases, the incomprehension lies on the side of the questioner. The insurrection has no ‘political’ meaning for our hermeneutical detectives, it does not follow a linear temporality of before and after. In standard social scientific terms, effects have a (causal or interpretative) link with causes allowing those coming after the events to comprehend them in reference to their before. The main characteristic of these events was their resistance to causal linearity. What seems to transverse the insurrection is a refusal, a ‘No more’, an ‘enough is enough’ without a categorical reference. This is precisely the novelty of the situation and what has mostly baffled and even outraged commentators: a negativity that stubbornly yields no meaning to the pursuers of hermeneutical clarity and defies the lovers of political certainty. A stubborn negativity characterises the insurrection, a Bartleby-type ‘I would prefer not to’. Is this a new modality of resistance appropriate to our globalised urban space, to out post-political condition and the debasement of democracy?

The urban space with its built and unbuilt, proper and improper places, its churches, football pitches and cruising spots has always expressed the inequality of social relations and offered a site of conflict. Urban legality comprises planning, architectural and traffic regulations, entertainment, protest and expression rules, licit and illicit ways of being in public. It imposes a grid of regularity and legibility, ascribing places to legitimate activities while banning others, structuring the movement of people and vehicles across space, ordering encounters between strangers. Yet from the regular urban riots of early modernity to the Bastille, the Paris Commune, the British reform movement and the suffragettes, the American civil rights movement, May 1968, the Athens Polytechnic, Prague and Bucharest uprisings, to name a few iconic cases, the ‘street’ has confronted and unsettled urban legality. Urban space offers ample opportunity for politiCurrent Affairs 75

cal action which has changed social systems, laws and institutions. The December riots join in a long series of street action across epochs and places. The vote, the vote for women, basic laws to protect labour and stop discrimination and many other entitlements today taken for granted were the result of street protests, violence and riots. The abstract denunciation of protests for their violence combines the defence of the status quo with historical ignorance. Let me look first at the special and temporal aspects of urban action. According to Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life, urban resistance takes strategic and tactical forms: “A strategy assumes a place that can be circumscribed as proper (propre)…The ‘proper’ is a victory of space over time. On the contrary, because it does not have a place, a tactic depends on time – it is always on the watch for opportunities that must be seized ‘on the wing.’” Strategy establishes a new place against already existing static places of authority or against structures of power. This spatial base facilitates resistance against temporal synchronicity and cyclical legality. Tactics on the other hand utilise temporality, the kairos or the timely; through an acceleration or disjointure of time, the propriety of place or structure is unsettled.

In these terms, the December events were a recognisable but transient form of ‘street’ resistance. It established its proper places, the Polytechnic, the Law School, the School of Economics and the adjacent Exarcheia area, against the authoritative stability of Parliament, Ministries or the Police HQ. It used the opportunities of school, University or pre-Christmas time (the burning of the Christmas tree, the protection of its replacement by riot police and its ‘decoration’ with rubbish, the disruption of Christmas shopping) to unsettle the propriety of cyclical temporality. Imagine Westminster and Whitehall, the White House and Congress under siege everyday for two weeks. This was not the use of public spaces for ordinary legitimate protest, something liberal commentators had to concede with some embarrassment quickly turning their ire and incomprehension to a condemnation of violence. What permeates the stubborn negativity is a condensation of causes, strategies, tactics and actions. The variety of causes which stabilise around a No, the multiplication of actions - some conventional protest forms, others highly novel and imaginative, the intensification of tactics indicates that this is not an ephemeral explosion. As events developed, the insurrection took on an impetus of its own, drawing in ever larger numbers in a snowballing effect that kept unsettling every attempt at calm and peace. At that point, it became clear that the listing of possible causes could not offer an understanding of the effects, that the before and the after became indistinguishable, that causes, effects and actions were intertwined into a knot, a nodal point that cannot be unravelled. In the same way that its arrival could not have been predicted, its long term 76 Bedeutung

effects are unknowable.

This turns the insurrection into an event, in the technical sense of the term in post-Heideggerian political philosophy and primarily that of Alain Badiou. An event is a modality of political action which was not inscribed in the inventory of the situation from which it emerged and cannot be reducible to the sum of factors that made it possible. Every situation consists of an infinite series of elements. The current Greek social and political formation includes many types of people, with different customs and habits, beliefs and ideologies, tastes and dislikes, straights and gays, fans of Olympiakos or Panathinaikos, lovers of rebetiko (urban blues) or punk music. But in the midst of this infinity of differences there is also an empty place, a void which, while invisible for the dominant forces, supports the stability of the totality. This void lies close to the most anonymous and vulnerable of the situation. The December events disrupted this settled state of recognised differences by performing the void of the socio-political situation: what was invisible, unspoken and unspeakable under the pre-existing rules and procedures while at the same time sustaining the coherence of the whole came to the fore. This is what made the insurrection difficult to comprehend, what stopped the disturbed commentators from ‘receiving its message’, as the Greeks use to say. It turned these events from a usual protest by students or workers into something new which sublates, both retains the characteristics of urban resistance and politics, and overtakes them radically changing the situation. Let me complicate this analysis: according to the most advanced contemporary political philosophy (Rancière, Mouffe, Žižek), late modern politics accepts the overall social balance, Badiou’s state of the situation, and aims at marginal (re)distributions of benefits, rewards and positions without challenging the structured order. This post-political or post-democratic condition takes economic and deliberative forms. In the former, individuals, groups and parties are seen as rational pursuers of interest while politics turns into an activity resembling the market-place. The Parliamentary budget debates which coincided with the insurrection exemplify this horse-trading amongst the recognised interests. In the deliberative mode, politics is organised according to argumentative strategies which apply communicative ethics. In this Habermasian ‘ideal dream situation’, politics is predominantly the field where rational consensus about public goods can be reached. Approached as a neo-liberal market-place or as a town-hall debate, politics pronounces conflict finished, passé, impossible, and at the same time, it disavows and forecloses its appearance. Proposals by the President of the Greek CBI that a grand coalition should be formed between the right-wing New Democracy and the centre-left Pasok parties or that ‘neutral’ mutually acceptable technocrats should be appointed to key Ministries exemplifies this ‘conflict-free’ approach to

politics. The replacement of conflict by a collaboration of modernising bureaucrats and liberal reformers turns the state into the muscleman for the market internally (exemplified by the severity of public order legislation and police brutality) and a superficially tolerant enforcer of humanitarianism externally (as seen in the recent ‘humanitarian wars’). But conflict does not disappear – the imposition of the imported ready-made recipes of neo-liberal capitalism if anything increases inequality and fuels conflict. Here we must introduce a key distinction between ordinary politics and the political. If post-politics veers between a ‘free for all’ market place and moralising deliberations (what we can call with Nancy, LacoueLabarthe and Mouffe) the political, as the expression and articulation of the indissolubility and inescapability of social conflict, is the horizon within which ordinary politics is conducted. In this sense, the political puts into circulation the absence of a common foundation of meaning or value and becomes the instituting function of society. When however social conflict cannot be expressed in politics and is foreclosed from the symbolic order, it returns in the real as radical evil and criminality, as xenophobia and fundamentalism, as terrorism and intolerance of the different; or indeed as reactive violence, the affective response of those invisible to the settled situation to the void which engulfs them.

In the Greek case, antagonism results from the tension between the structured social body and its political representation, where every group has its role, function and place, and what Jacques Rancière calls ‘the part of no part’: groups, causes and interests radically excluded from the social or political order. Huge numbers of people find themselves in a situation where their most essential demands cannot be formulated in the language of a political problem. Against the surfeit of causes, the abundance of (inadequate) meanings, the hermeneutical bonanza of commentators, conventional political meaning cannot be extracted from or imposed on this performing void. In this sense, the insurrection as event is the performance of the political as such. It is an unadulterated expression of political agency at its degree zero. This makes the insurrection a ‘phatic’ expression according to Roman Jacobson’s definition. It does not say ‘I want this or that’ but simply, ‘here I am’, ‘here I stand against’ (Žižek). Not I claim this or that right, but I claim the ‘right to have rights’. Being invisible, outside the established sense of what exists, speaks and is acceptable, the inhabitants of the void must perform their existence. We, the nobodies, they seem to be saying, the schoolkids, the suffering University students, the unemployed and unemployable, the generation that must survive on a salary of 600 Euros, are everything. We, the apolitical, voiceless, indifferent nothings, are the only universal against those who have always interpreted their particular interests as universal. When the director of state television dismissed people

who raised protest banners during a live news broadcast by calling them ‘disorganised rabble’ or people with no ‘social identity’ he came close to the truth, malgré lui. When the disorganised become visible (and TV news is symbolically significant) politics proper erupts. When an excluded part demands to be included and must change the rules of inclusion to succeed, a new political subject is constituted, in excess of the hierarchical and visible groups. ‘A division is put in the “common sense” about what is given, about the frame within which we see something as given’ (Rancière).

The TV director reminded me of the American congressmen who voted down the early Bush-Paulson rescue pack to bail out the ailing financial institutions because they saw it as a communist conspiracy. This is also the state of most Greek politicians and commentators. Ideology is at its strongest when it turns its axioms into the natural, given way of understanding and living in the world. At times of crisis, these axioms (the kids are apolitical, the market is the best mechanism for organising public goods, law is a neutral protector above politics) become denaturalised and are seen for what they are: pure ideology, shameless lies that pass for the truth. This rift in what was perceived as the natural order of things and as a main support for identity is emotionally experienced as great loss. No wonder that many people whether against or for them felt the December events as an unprecedented draining experience.

Before the event, political change is a matter of policing and consensus. After the rift, politics returns to a certain normality; its terrain will have changed, however, through the appearance of a new subjectivity and the re-arrangement of the rules of political visibility. For Badiou, the event is evanescent, its very purpose to disappear. ‘The event will be recorded in its very disappearance only in the form of a linguistic trace, which I call “the name” of the event, and will supplement the situation with next to nothing’. The insurrection only respectively can be recognised as an event, if people, some people remain true to that ‘next to nothing’ of the performance of the void. This is a wager on all of us. Whether the insurrection becomes an event or remains just that (important as that is) depends on those who after its disappearance will give it a name (ta Nea Dekembriana) and will remain loyal to the idea of rewriting the rules of political visibility. As far as the recently depressed followers of liberalism are concerned, let us remind them some honourable parts of their tradition: If the hallmark of democracy is the disappearance of certainty about the foundations of social life, in the absence of foundations, the meaning and unity of the social is constituted, negotiated and fought over in physical and metaphorical public spaces. Urban space is the product of conflict, the space of a democracy that recognises conflict as its very nature and, rather than trying to repress or marginalise it, finds in it its greatest strength. In this sense the city may be replacing the nation state as the citadel of new forms of politics and subjectivity.

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Bedeutung projects

In November 2010, Bedeutung will launch Bedeutung Projects, a series of events including talks, lectures, screenings and exhibitions taking place in London and abroad. For more information, visit www.bedeutung.co.uk/projects

WAR IN THE 21C

WAR, MEMES AND MEMEPLEXES

Chris Coker

cientists imagine that before the universe came into being it existed in a state of potentiality. Time and space held in abeyance ‘in a fog of possibility’, as one commentator puts it, until, that is, the Big Bang.1 A similar process is probably true of the origins of war. We might like to imagine – for those of us familiar with Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, that from killing baboons it was a small step to killing a member of our own species, in one weapon wielding moment. But our biological essence would appear to be co-operation, not intra-species aggression. We probably only began warring against each other when we started to fence in our land – war is a product of (agri)culture, not the ‘state of nature.’ In due course when we started building cities and walling ourselves in we invented ‘war’ –a ritualised form of warfare with its own protocols, taboos and restrictions. War has a history – a very recent one, dating back 12,000 years to the first walled city, Jericho. Whether war can be traced back to nature or nurture, in a sense, misses the point. The truth probably is that both are so intertwined that it is now impossible to tell one from the other. As biological creatures, we are necessarily social animals. Culture is programmed into us as a species, and war is an especially interesting cultural product. The question is whether we have been brainwashed into war over the millennia by a ‘false consciousness’ (most recently, nationalism), or whether we have been misled for centuries by our priests and politicians. But this is not in itself a Darwinian question. The Darwinian still wants to know why young men are so susceptible to what the writer Luis Borges called ‘the moral and ascetic charms of war’, and therefore open to exploitation by priests and politicians who still send them off to fight.2

It is easier to explain away the willingness to kill. Anthropologists can find good instrumental reasons for taking another person’s life such as the competition for scarce resources or breeding stock. But the dying is difficult to explain away in Darwinian terms, for each of us is programmed to avoid pain and especially an early death (and war is usually a young man’s calling). Natural selection tells us that an early death is something to be avoided. Those rare individuals, the warriors, who invite it do so because they believe that they owe their life a good death. A good death makes life meaningful, but meaning too, of course, is a cultural construction.

Those who object to Darwinian explanations are often deeply opposed to any proposals to re-cast questions in the social sciences and humanities in terms of cultural evolution. But war does seem to have evolved in a way that Darwinian theory would suggest. It has a wide appeal across the centuries and across cultures which should prompt us to ask whether something corresponding to natural selection is taking place.

Are some ideas such as war more competitive than others because of their intrinsic appeal or merit, or do they persist because they compete with other ideas (peace), survive the competition and spread? In her book, Blood Rites, Barbara Ehrenreich reaches the conclusion that war is contagious. It spreads from one culture to the next. In some senses, she adds, it useful to see it as a ‘self-replicating pattern of behaviour’. War, she suggests, should be seen as a loose assemblage of algorithms or programmes (in the computer sense of the term) for collective action. As a meme it is particularly tenacious. The idea that it is glorious to die for one’s country persisted for centuries. ‘Culture in other words cannot always be counted upon ‘to be on our side’. Insofar as it allows humans to escape the imperatives of biology, it may do so only to entrap us in what are often crueller imperatives of its own.’3

The word ‘meme’ is an abbreviation of another, ‘mimene’ which is derived from the Greek mimesis (imitation). It has now entered the English language. It appears in the most recent edition of the Oxford English Dictionary where it is defined as ‘an element of culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means’. A number of writers now employ the term ‘mimetics’ – the theory that much of human social evolution is based on the differential spread of units of culture called memes (a notion originally proposed by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene). Memes are said to resemble genes in that they produce cultural change through a process similar to natural selection: those memes that are passed on by imitation and learning tend to dominate social life. The concept is catching on fast. In a recent book James Bennett argues that, over the centuries, the English-speaking world has been ‘infested’ by various ‘mimetic viral plagues’ which have gained a foothold in the culture before being expelled. They include ‘continental feudalism’, ‘revolutionary utopianism, ‘French revolutionary idealism,’ and of course ‘Marxism’. My favourite example is ‘slaveism’ which Bennett is keen to argue was primarily a Spanish/Portuguese phenomenon which the British felt compelled to copy until realising the error of their ways.4

Some confusion has arisen over the definition of the word, and indeed in his book, Dawkins unconsciously misled his readers by claiming that: just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperm or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain by a process which, in the broad sense of the term, can be called imitation.

The problem with his account is that it is the gene that is the unit of selection, even though it is the phenotype which is actually subject to the process of selection. The gene is the replicator, or set of instructions; the phenotype is the physical manifestation of

the organism, the behaviour resulting from the set of instructions. Dawkins later corrected himself with the following definition:

A meme should be regarded as a unit of information residing in a brain. It has a definite structure realised in whatever medium the brain uses for storing information …This is to distinguish it from phenotypic effects which are its consequences in the outside world.5

In other words, a meme is merely a set of instructions, the blueprint, not the product. Yet at the popular level, memes still continue to be discussed in terms of his 1976 definition.

A far more serious objection to memes is that it is difficult to demonstrate experimentally that they actually exist. Biologically, a gene is a distinct part of the chromosome. Chemically, it consists of DNA. Physically, it consists of a double-helix. As Dawkins himself acknowledges, memes have not yet found their Watson or Crick. Memes–we have to presume–are to be found in brains, where they are largely invisible to observation.6 Memes are hypothetical constructs inferred from observation of behaviour rather than observed in themselves. Does this make them useless at the explanatory level, as Dawkins’s critics suggest?7

Nothing would please meme supporters more than to present the world with a list of detailed, experimentally testable, examples. Unfortunately, there is no way to establish whether memes exist experientially. But then it is difficult to prove much of quantum physics through experimentation. We know for example, at the very least, that we can divide matter into atoms, that those atoms can be divided in turn into the subatomic particles: electrons, protons and neutrons, and possibly that these particles can themselves be divided into quarks. I say 'possibly' because quarks have never been observed. It is not entirely unwarranted to argue, as some scientists do, that physicists have no business wasting their time on another hypothesis – string theory that postulates a new feature of nature some 100 million billion times smaller than anything we can directly probe through our senses, enhanced or otherwise. The debate is informed only, in part, by physics. It also involves distinct philosophies about how physics should be done. The ‘traditionalists’ want theoretical work to be closely tied to experimental observation. Others think we are ready to tackle questions that are beyond our present technological ability to test empirically.8

The same could be said of memes. In the end, it is a matter of faith that they will one day be demonstrated to exist. What we can say is that the world is beginning to make money out of taking them seriously. In 2004, a group in California carried out an experiment in meme production by launching on the market (or the meme pool) a new meme – the term ‘bright’ as

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a popular word for an atheist just as the word ‘gay’ has been almost wholly appropriated by the homosexual community. So far they have not had much success. The evolutionary psychologist Paul Marsden has even launched a company called Brand Genetics to help firms identify and clone strong memes in the marketplace.9 Whether or not memes exist, or the idea of them will catch on, I would contend that meme theory provides a fascinating insight into the origins and evolution of war through the centuries. And, at the very least, it provides a unifying framework for thinking about the different style of war in the present age.

In all cases, including war, we have to know how a meme replicates itself. One suggestion is the role of ‘intelligent design’ - manipulation by states or political leaders. War has always, in part at least, been intelligently designed. The best example of this is militarism – a nineteenth century ideology that reinforced another, fascism. Another intelligently designed meme – class war, never really took off as Marx and Engels expected because it was hijacked by nationalism, in one particular case by Stalin’s commitment to ‘socialism in one country’.

A more compelling explanation for the appeal of war is that memes are passed on from one generation to the next rather like viruses: they infect a host. The spreading of religion, wrote William James, which he believed was also transmitted culturally, was due to what it called a ‘mystical germ’ – it was, he wrote, a very common germ for it had created ‘the rank and file of believers.’10 Religion appeals to many because it creates a sense of belonging. James’s ‘mystical germ’ was not a gene, it was a germ, and germs are caught by infection. So, in that sense, we may say that war replicates itself contagiously.

Another explanation which I find much more convincing is Ehrenreich’s: war persists because of its capacity to compete successfully with other memes. Assuming memes exist, it is possible to maintain that the survival value of any cultural instructor is the same as its function: the survival and replication of itself. A meme, writes Daniel Dennett, is ‘an information packet with attitude – a recipe or instruction manual for doing something cultural.’11 Memes can be translated into any language, whether practiced by hunter-gatherer societies or risk societies today. They persist because they can be transmitted or copied, and it is their persistence which is most remarkable. They persist because they are so adaptable, which is what Clausewitz meant when he wrote that every era fights war differently; in every age war has its own distinctive ‘cultural grammar.’ And the most convincing explanation for the persistence of war is that the memes that survive interact co-competitively and combine with others. Those that survive have a trans-cultural appeal, or flourish

in the presence of other memes (such as religion) and thus give rise to what Dawkins calls meme-complexes. In the earliest days, simple memes survived by virtue of their universal appeal to human psychology. When war became more organised and structured, as society became more complex, we reached the memeplex stage. Memeplexes

gests that our thoughts do not always aim at our own advantage, but rather their own. We are left with the prospect that some memes, like war, discourage the exercise of judgment that might decide that peace is actually better for us just as faith (the meme for religion - is God just a computer virus, asks Dawkins) disadvantages–so some claim–the exercise of the sort of critical judgement that might decide that religion too is dangerous for our health. It produces inquisitions, witchcraft trials and religious wars.

Of course, meme theory has its critics. People dislike the idea that war is a virus that infects its host because it is deemed to attack the principle of free will. Thus, Dawkins writes, when you plant a meme in a mind you literally parasitise a brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitise a genetic mechanism of a host cell.12 Dawkins takes religion as a key example. Many religions teach the objectively implausible but subjectively appealing doctrine that the soul survives our death.13 The idea of immortality has itself survived and spread because it caters to wishful thinking, and wishful thinking counts because human psychology has a near-universal tendency to let belief be coloured by desire. It is the idea that the soul persist after death that animated the Crusaders, and that animates suicide bombers in today’s Middle East.

Midgley voices a second objection, which I think is likely to resonate even more with some critics. If we need only explain any war by reference to a meme that successfully invades a population that has no immunity to it (the metaphor is telling) then do we not excuse ourselves from having to understand human psychology: such as peoples’ intentions, nightmares and dreams? Do we not need, however, to look into their hearts.16 But is this a valid point? All memes evolve in human consciousness. ‘Being involved in thinking’, writes Dennett, is a meme’s way of being tested by natural selection. It tries to have broad appeal.17 War has had an enormous appeal over the centuries, but its appeal is clearly diminishing even in terms of those aspects of war that for the philosopher and psychologist William James gave it it’s moral force, or romance. It appealed to so many for so long because it was considered heroic.

Whatever argument we prefer, writes Mary Midgley, meme theory is still rather bleak because it sug-

For glory to be part of the script, there had to be a narrative structure. Like any story, the history of a nation had to have a beginning, middle and even an end. Today, war still persists but it has now re-cast as risk management. And it is still often fought for glory, except that the concept has been instrumentalised. Glory can mean different things: ‘honour’, ‘worth’, ‘price’ or ‘estimate’. Like individuals, nations are still concerned with worth, because value is inti-

Dennett prefers a different metaphor: symbiosis. A meme can be symbiotic in that it encourages sacrifice and altruism without which we would not, as humans, have achieved so much. Dennett is aware that in claiming that memes are only interested in their own fitness (i.e. their own reproduction) this is an argument against human agency, but he reminds us that there are three kinds of meme. There are parasites, whose presence lowers the fitness of their hosts; commensals, whose presence is neutral and mutualists, whose presence enhances the fitness of both the host and the guest.14 We should expect memes to come in all three shapes. Some enhance our fitness (child rearing and food preparation); some are neutral but are important for us in other regards (music/ literacy) and some may be positively harmful such as war. But when we look at the history of war in detail, we find that it fulfils all three functions at the same time. It has made many societies more competitive; it has inspired great art, and enhanced the richness of life; it has inspired others to great deeds which do not always require a battlefield, of course, for their transmission. As Robert Wright reminds us, until very recently war has rarely been zero-sum. Only in the twentieth century did it become so harmful that it threatened at one point to destroy the western world which had mastered and perfected it more than any other.15

Today we seem to have turned our back on heroism. It is not so much that we do not want our heroes to be what they seem; it is that circumstances seem to prevent them from being what they wish to become. Nowhere is this more true than in the case of the word ‘glory,’ a word which makes many of us distinctly uncomfortable. “It will be a hopeless fight”, wrote the Austrian Chief of Staff in his diary shortly before the First World War. “Nevertheless it must be waged, since an old monarchy and a glorious army must not perish without glory”.18 Churchill was to invoke glory again in 1940 in encouraging the British people not to surrender. The difference was crucial, of course. He wanted them to fight on, not to go down gloriously in defeat, though I have little doubt that if that had been the final outcome, Churchill himself would have considered it a fitting end to the national story. As the historian A.J.P. Taylor once famously remarked (not entirely ironically), Churchill was the price the British people paid for reading history.19

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mately linked to authority, especially the authority of the state. If we take glory to mean ‘fame’ or ‘renown’ then it may indeed appear applicable only to the premodern era. If we understand it to mean ‘deference’, ‘just due’ or ‘prestige’, then it is still an important motive for going to war. For most of history, war has been one of the principal instruments through which reputations have been won.

States may no longer fight to win status, but they do so to retain it. For with it goes something else which is central to power: honour. In our world, honour means ‘credibility’ (the word which was introduced into common parlance during the Cold War). If war has become risk management, what we are especially anxious to manage is anything that puts our credibility at risk. What is important about credibility is that, like honour, it requires the recognition of others. Hobbes told us this three centuries ago – we want to be respected because respect is the currency of power. In the words of Pierre Bourdieu, ‘an individual who sees himself through the eyes of others, has need of others for his existence, because the image he has of himself is indistinguishable from that presented to him by other people’.20 In 1914, Russia’s honour required it to back Serbia; Austria’s required it to issue its ultimatum to the Serbian Government. The rest, as they say, is history. In 1939, Britain’s honour required it to guarantee the borders of Poland even though it was in no position to defend them. Even in the Cold War, the credibility of the United States required that a ‘decent interval’ should follow the defeat in Vietnam. In pursuit of that end, Nixon and Kissinger prolonged the war until they achieved ‘peace with honour’ in 1973, though the ‘interval’ between defeat and South Vietnam’s eventual fall did not last long.

Credibility is now the risk age’s word of choice. Elsewhere, more old-fashioned honour often requires that men inflict pain on others. Honour, in that sense, is a social bond, and winning it back a social obligation. And in much of the world the defence of honour is also not confined to the present. It is shared with the ancestors with whom it is important to keep faith. Cultures of honour, adds Steven Pinker, spring up because they amplify human emotions like pride, anger and revenge, and because they reinforce solidarity, the clanship links or gang membership from which their members derive safety. They are often a sensible response to local conditions, whether in LA Central or Afghanistan. Honour represents a kind of social reality. It exists because everybody agrees it exists, and it must be constantly defended on a hairtrigger response because it is dangerous not to. To be risk-averse is to invite dishonour, which can be dangerous, as Hobbes tells us. On the streets of our own inner cities, the commission of a homicide in revenge for a slight may even be an obligatory rite of passage

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into an adult world. ‘To turn the other cheek is not saintly, but stupid, or contemptibly weak.’21

In other words, two memes–honour and war–feed off what for Hobbes was one of the chief characteristics of the human race: its need for self-esteem. War will only end–i.e. we will only have an immunity to it–when we do indeed look into our hearts and discover that we no longer need to take revenge, or even seek the esteem of others at least on the terms of our own choosing. One of the first writers to appreciate this was one of the great, if now forgotten, Scottish Enlightenment thinkers Lord Kames, for whom revenge was ‘the darling principle of human nature’. For him, the power of retribution was the motivating force of history, and the civilising principle was its transfer from private to public hands. Gradually, the law had become the only legitimate avenger. “There perhaps never was in government, a revolution of greater importance than this”. For, once they surrendered personal recourse to the lex talionis (the law of retaliation), people became aware not only of state authority but, also, of civil society for the first time. They became social beings, as well as law-abiding ones. With all the confidence of an Enlightenment thinker, Kames even foresaw a time when civil society would polish its members to the point when no one would want to avenge themselves on those who had wronged them.22 Unfortunately, we are a long way from that noble vision. Revenge is one of the principal themes of terrorism. People still wish to be avenged for slights, often less real than they imagine, for the humiliation to which they feel they have been subjected (including insults to the ancestors, for the contract with the dead is often stronger than that with the living). Dishonour is deeply felt. Whatever else distinguishes us as a species, self-loathing must be high on the list. Degradation matters. We are what Nietzsche called the ‘beast with red cheeks’, the only animal on the planet that can blush when it sees itself in the mirror. As Lichtenberg put it pithily, when looking into a mirror, an ape should not expect to see an apostle staring back. That is why humiliation matters. Degradation is especially felt when it involves the body subjected to pain, to constant day-to-day searches at Israeli security check points on the West Bank, or the body violated in Abu-Ghraib. It is the potential to imagine our bodies transfigured in the next world into pure spirit, and yet disfigured in this, that makes us human. Our sense of indignity is the essence of dignity. Today, war has readapted again. Revenge is one of the most potent memes of all (keeping faith with the ancestors, with the community, with the faith). The cheap bomb–the suicide bomber–has lodged itself in our collective consciousness as one of the key tropes in the War on Terror. Perhaps, in the suicide bomber we see someone who lives more intensely,

[...] Two memes– honour and war–feed off what for Hobbes was one of the chief characteristics of the human race: its need for selfesteem. War will only end–i.e. we will only have an immunity to it– when we do indeed look into our hearts and discover that we no longer need to take revenge, or even seek the esteem of others at least on the terms of our own choosing.

who overcomes the oblivion of death because it is only through killing that self-respect can be won back. It is through the measure of his sacrifice that the suicide bomber wins the respect of family and community. Then again, the motives may be more personal. Some suicide bombers are prepared to engage in the ekstasis of killing. We imagine that, at the point of death, others may experience a superabundance of life that flares up magnificently into a contempt of death. Ideologically, at least, suicide bombing is one way by which respect can be won back. In the western world this too is little recognised, but it should be, because it is a particularly tenacious meme: it encourages imitation; it is highly mimetic.

The conflicts in the future may arise between those who have found war to be zero sum because of its risks, and those who are willing to take risks to assert their identity, or earn a living. As Daniel Dennett writes, in the New World that Columbus opened to European expansion, it was European germs that brought to the brink of extinction local populations that had no immunity against them. As a result, they were almost entirely wiped out in the space of two generations. In the twenty-first century, it is memes, not genes, that may threaten the rest of us. Indeed, toxic memes are everywhere in the form of xenophobia, fundamentalism and religious fanaticism. In our own day, false prophets and Messiahs still abound.23

States too want to take their own ‘revenges’. And the US just happens to be strong enough to seek revenge in the most ruthless manner. The original Enlightenment sponsors of America’s bid for independence were inspired by Kames’s story; they, too, believed revenge might one day wither. By the time of Andrew Jackson, the vision had largely vanished. Walter Russell Mead identifies ‘assertive nationalism’ as the Jacksonian tradition in American politics, and it has certainly been a prominent feature of the Bush years. It was Jackson who was also the first President to encourage Americans to turn to pistols, dirks, and cane-swords to avenge insults themselves, and not rely on the state. It was the 1820s generation that talked of the “vindictive wrath of a justly defended and law-renewing community”.24 Americans soon forgot the wise words of John Adams that they shouldn’t think they were more virtuous than other people. “Power always thinks it has great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak” [Madeleine Albright: ‘We are the indispensable nation’]; and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all His laws [Albright: ‘Multilateral if we can, unilateral if necessary’].25 My own concern is that recent practices, including ‘extraordinary rendition’ and the immunity that Private Security Companies have been granted in Iraq, suggest that western ‘market states’ may be increasingly willing 86 Bedeutung

to contract out their revenge to others.26 Reconceptualising War

Meme theory is still in its infancy. I suspect it is unlikely to be widely accepted as demonstrably true. But then, does that really matter? Memes are useful not for their scientific merit alone but also for moral reasons: they encourage us to think in new ways. At one point Dawkins himself speaks of them simply as an analogy. Dennett, while making stronger claims to their scientific status, also adds that ‘whether or not the meme perspective can be turned into science in its philosophical guise it has already done much more good than harm’.27 What good has it done? Let me make three claims.

First, it reminds us that our humanity is shared – not only do we all feel pain we also feel shame; war is a product of nature and nurture, and the enemy is not some alien ‘other’ that it is impossible to comprehend let alone talk to. Memeplexes are political realms. Whatever explanation we come up with to explain the motivations of terrorists, they will have to be engaged politically. We and they are not a different species inhabiting the same planet. Risk management may not be heroic but it is sensible – it allows us to buy time until some of the most intractable actors can be folded back into the political process. For what a truly de-politicised discourse might look like, that is, one in which common humanity cannot be assumed, we must turn to science fiction. Let me cite an episode from Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which the captain of the Enterprise Jean-Luc Picard debates his fate with the Borg Collective. The Borg is a collective entity in which all individuality has been repressed and everybody works for the good of the whole. It represents everything humanity is not. It is the ultimate alien, writes Adam Roberts, the true ‘other’ because it is not even worth considering what makes for its ‘otherness’. The Federation which Picard represents is centred on one planet – the Earth (Sector 001 in the series). It is also metaphorically centred on core human values and beliefs which are still at the heart of our concept of self. The Borg, by contrast, have no centre, no purpose or sense of meaning. “They have neither honour nor courage,” complains the Klingon warrior, Worf. They are a meme-less just as they are a gene-less community, as Picard finds out for himself after he is captured .

PICARD: I will resist you to my last ounce of strength. BORG: Strength is irrelevant. Resistance is futile – your culture will adapt to serve as ours. PICARD: Impossible! My culture is based on freedom and self-determination.

BORG: Freedom is irrelevant. Self-determination is irrelevant. You must comply. PICARD: We would rather die. BORG: Death is irrelevant.

The text is pretty banal, especially when it appears on the printed page, but the importance of the exchange lies in the total ‘otherness’ of the enemy. For the Borg do not claim that they are stronger than the Federation. They simply say, ‘strength is irrelevant’. They do not have different values; they have no values that we would recognise as human. They do not say, ‘your strength is insufficient’, which would actually mean by implication ‘we value our superior strength’. Instead, they insist that it does not figure or compute. And they do not value life because they cannot imagine the concept of sacrifice, which is why for them death really is irrelevant. It doesn’t ‘compute’. Picard, concludes Roberts, cannot enter imaginatively into their world any more than they can enter into his. There can be no exchange and no negotiation.28

It is impossible to imagine such a dialogue between a hostage and a hostage taker in Beirut in 1983, still less between a suicide bomber and his acquired target in Israel today, should he survive to be interrogated. Today’s world sees a clash of wills involving different understandings of sacrifice, different meanings of death, as well as different concepts of honour, both of them reflecting the meme of revenge. We live in a dangerous and deeply divided world, but it is still one that is recognisably human. What makes it a human world is that it is mimetic – imitation (in particular the reciprocal imitation of desire), not originality, is the definitive mark of our species. Recent scientific exploration of imitation (such as Vittorio Gallese and Giacomo Rizzolati’s research on ‘mirror neurons’) suggests that imitative behaviour is about to become a new paradigm in the behavioural sciences.29 And never before has imitation been so encouraged, and so quickly, through new technologies such as the internet, television, and cell phone cameras – ours is a deeply imitative age.

Secondly, meme theory encourages us to remember that war has its own logic. Clausewitz described war as a chameleon which incessantly adapts itself to existing conditions. One of the memes explored by Susan Blackmore in her book, The Meme Machine is very specific to our post-modern times, alien abduction. It used to be highly competitive in the meme pool: by the end of the 1990s, 3.7m Americans claimed to have been abducted. A mimetic approach, she insists, provides the most likely explanation for the phenomenon. Many people suffer, without knowing it, from sleep paralysis. Some wake up, apparently, convinced that they have been abducted. X-Files conspiracy theories have made it especially tenacious. It was difficult to challenge, because the aliens were considered skilled in inducing amnesia and leaving

behind few, if any, physical traces of their presence. And governments, if they knew about it, were not telling. It was a particularly successful meme because it provided an explanation for an unpleasant physical experience. It had great appeal, especially in Middle America, which had long been seized by conspiracy theories, beginning with another insidious threat, communism in the 1950s.30

But every conspiracy theory burns itself out in the end. Over time, it becomes less contagious. In the wake of 9/11, it seems to have been replaced by a different fear, terrorism. Indeed, alien abduction stories have ceased to hit the news overnight. UFO magazines have gone out of circulation. Aliens have disappeared from the collective imagination, as have the websites devoted to monitoring them. More immediate threats are now to hand.

But we should be in no doubt that the strongest memes survive for a reason: they appeal to the imagination. Writing four years before 9/11, Brian Appleyard explained the ubiquity of the abduction meme in the conclusion to a book, Aliens: Why They Are Here. Aliens were here, he maintained, whether real, or demonic, or both at the same time. He confessed that in the course of writing the book he had moved from scepticism to belief and finally to acceptance. He had come to accept belief in alien abduction for what it was – an essential expression of our continued longing for metaphysical meaning, even though we live in risk-averse, post-heroic times. It was, ultimately, a manifestation of our need for monsters, and, of course, saviours waiting in the wings. His cultural explanation may ring true for those outside looking in at the western obsession with terrorism. For it too, at times, seems to express a yearning for a metaphysical reality, as well as to tap into an obsession with conspiracies and to capture a profound concern about the vulnerability of the societies we have become.31 Terrorism, of course, is real–there is nothing more real than getting blown up–but it is also subjective. For we see terrorism as a ‘scourge’, a ‘plague’, an exogenous or endogenous reality. We prefer to treat it as a force of nature.

All our popular obsessions, writes Harold Bloom, including alien abduction and near- death experience, testify to our expectation of release from the burdens of a society that is weary with its sense of belatedness or ‘aftering’ – the fear that we have somehow arrived after the main event.32 Perhaps, our own age is one that we find so boring that many of us aspire unconsciously to transcend it in defiance of the old Chinese curse about living in interesting times. Our deep fears and neuroses may even be the collectively unwilled expression of a generalised condition, the manifestation of an unexpressed yearning to move beyond an age of risk, into something more heroic. The War on Terror is merely the latest manifestation of a human need – to be fearful of something that

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transcends the everyday.

Finally, meme theory is useful in illustrating one other reality. There are no Kantian solutions (democratic peace theory), or magic bullets that will bring war to an end. For war must not be seen in isolation. Hence the importance of the memeplex. Midgley herself makes this point when discussing genes. We cannot eliminate war through genetic means by targeting, for example, the gene for aggression. That such a gene exists, she has no doubt. There is good evidence, after all, that there is a centre of the brain specifically concerned with it. But a gene should never be seen in isolation. Our capacity for anger is deeply interwoven with out capacity for fear, love, respect and contempt. The clue to ending aggression is not genetic engineering; it is to extend the sympathies we feel to a circle wider than out immediate family, out tribe, our community or even nation. It is to be less fearful of the ‘other’; more charitable to strangers, more respectful of other peoples’ customs, and less contemptuous of the mores of ‘tribes’ other than our own.33

War, in the end, is only a means, it is not an end in itself. Most states practice it in the name of peace; many non-state actors pursue it as a way to revenge themselves on others. For many terrorists, it is the means that count most (which makes it an end in itself, a fatal contradiction in terms). This is why all conventions to ban war are useless in the absence of any wider ‘civilising process’ at work which might predispose us not to harm the people who harm us, or to insist on defending our own honour come what may. If this is not a very optimistic note on which to conclude, so be it.

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ENDNOTES

1 Alberto Manguel, A Reading Diary: A Year of Favourite Books (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005) p.xi. 2 Ibid, p.84 3 Barbara Ehrenreich, Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War (London: Virago, 1997) p.235. 4 James C Bennett, The Anglosphere Challenge: Why English-Speaking Nations Will Lead The Way In The Twenty-First Century (Lanham, Roman and Littlefield) p.5 5 Alister McGrath, Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes and the Meaning of Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005) p.123. 6 Susan Blackmore, The Meme Machine. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) p.5 7 McGrath, Dawkin’s God, op.cit. p.129. 8 Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions and The Quest for the Ultimate Theory, (London: Vintage, 2000). p.231 9 Oona Strathern, A Brief History of the Future, (London: Robinson, 2007) p.301. 10 Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: religion as a natural phenomenon (London: Penguin, 2006). P.84 11 ibid, p.350 12 Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976) p.207. 13 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, (London, Bantam, 2006) p.190. 14 Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (London: Penguin, 1996) p.340. 15 Robert Wright, Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny (London: Vintage, 2001). 16 Mary Midgley, The Myths We Live By (London: Routledge, 2004) p.70. 17 Dennett, Breaking the Spell, p. 78 18 Hew Strachan, The First World War (London: Pocket Books, 2006) p.10. 19 A. J. P. Taylor in A. J. P. Taylor (ed.) Churchill: Four Faces and the Man (London: Allen Lane, 1969) p. 56 20 Cited Richard Sennett, Respect: The formation of character in an age of inequality (London: Penguin, 2003) p.55. 21 Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: the modern denial of human nature, (London: Allen Lane, 2002) p.327. 22 Cited J.M. Opal ‘Vengeance and civility: a new look at early American statecraft,’ The Journal of the Historical Society, Volume VIII: Number 1, March 2008 pp. 61-62 23 Dennett, Breaking the Spell, p.304. 24 Opal, Vengeance and civility’, op cit. p. 84 25 Cited Andrew J Bacevich, ‘Illusions of Managing History: the enduring relevance of Reinhold Niebuhr’, Historically Speaking X:3, January/February 2008, p.26. 26 For the market states see Philip Bobbitt, Terror and Consent (London: Allen Lane, 2008). 27 Midgley, The Myths We Live By, op. cit. p.68. 28 Adam Roberts, Science Fiction (London: Routledge, 2000) pp.166-167. 29 Rene Girard, Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues of the Origins of Culture (London: Continuum, 2007) p. 4. Thomas Kuhn makes the same point about science when he says that we have hyped up originality here too. Kuhn gives the name ‘normal science’ to the limited work which proceeds according to pre-set plans without raising new questions. In Kuhn’s thinking original thinking is an abnormal activity for scientists. It is not what science is ‘about’. 30 Blackmore, The Meme Machine, pp.176-178. 31 Brian Appleyard, Aliens, Why They Are Here (London: Scribner, 2005). 32 Ibid, p.295. 33 Mary Midgley, Evolution as a Religion: strange hopes and even stranger fears (London: Routledge, 1985) p. 61

Current Affairs 89

ASSIST ED

SUICIDE:

the LAW and POLICY

John Cooper

he State has a fundamental duty to preserve life and the courts have recognised that a balance has been struck between this and the right of self-determination. There is also a State interest in preventing suicide. None of this is particularly controversial, no legal system can be perceived as sanctioning the taking of life.

The Suicide Act 1961 abrogated the rule of law whereby it is a crime for a person to commit suicide. It had been considered a felony at common law for a sane person of the age of responsibility to kill themselves either intentionally on in the course of trying to kill another. As a matter of legal history, such a suicide was regarded as self-murder. Though the offender was in the nature of things, personally beyond the reach of the law, their guilt was not without important consequences, at common law, since it resulted in the forfeiture of the deceased’s body.

The results were more important, however, where the attempt failed, for then, since the individual had attempted to commit a felony he was guilty under ordinary common law principles, of the misdemeanour of attempted suicide. If the unfortunate defendant in the course of trying to kill himself killed another, he was guilty of murder under the doctrine of transferred malice. Though suicide was regarded as “not a very serious crime” an intention to commit was thus the mens rea of murder. Following the Suicide Act 1961, Section 1, which removed suicide from the Criminal Calendar, it followed that attempted suicide also ceased to be criminal and that there was no place for the doctrine of transferred malice where the defendant kills another in the course of trying to kill himself, for there is no malice to transfer . This old jurisprudence continues to influence the way the law treats assisted suicide. The law surrounding assisted suicide was clarified in Attorney General v Able , in which the defendants who were members of the Executive Committee of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society published a booklet entitled “A Guide to Self-Deliverance” for distribution to members of the Society, subject

to certain qualifications, the expressed aim of which was to overcome the fear of the process of dying. While the booklet could deter a would-be suicide, it could also assist a person to commit suicide who might not otherwise do so. Indeed, it set out five separate methods of suicide.

The introduction in the booklet articulates the views of some members of the Society as to their rights to control the manner and timings of their deaths. The introduction commences: “The reasons for writing this pamphlet are quite simple. Those who join Exit do so because that believe that they have a right to a say in the manner and timing of their death, particularly if it seems likely that the process of dying will be a long one and distressing either to them or to their friends and families. For some the main fear will be of continuing pain, while for others the main fear is of paralysis of body or mind, or simply weariness with a life that has deteriorated beyond repair”. In Attorney General v Able, Woolf J (as he then was) laid down three requirements that were necessary as a minimum before the crime of assisted suicide can be made out. They are that conduct of an alleged accessory to suicide should indicate (a) that the accused knew that the suicide was contemplated

(b) the that accused approved of or asserted to it, and

(c) that the accused’s attitude in respect of the potential suicide in fact encouraged the principle offender to perform (or attempt to perform) the suicide. In R: B (Consent to Treatment Capacity), a competent adult sought a declaration from the court that she was entitled to refuse medical treatment even though a refusal would result in her death. She had a right to do so. The position in which Ms B found herself in was one of demanding her right to take her own life.

When a disabled person is unable to take their own life an entirely different set of

principles will apply. That person cannot ask another to take their life or take steps which would result in the extinguishment of their life without exposing that other person to the risk criminal sanctions. The Suicide Act 1961 Section 2 laid down that: “Section 2(1)

A person who aids, abets, counsels or procures the suicide of another, or an attempt by another to commit suicide, shall be liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years. Section 2(2)

If on trial of an indictment for murder or manslaughter it is proved that the accused aided, abetted, counselled or procured the suicide of the person in question, the jury may find him guilty of that offence… Section 2(4)

… no proceedings shall be instituted for an offence under this section except by or with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions”. As to sentencing, in R v Sweeney (1986) 8 Cr App R (S) 419 CA, Watkins L.J. said that it was the policy of the law that even desperate people must be deterred from taking life. In Hough (1984) 6 Cr App R (S) 407, Lord Lane C.J. observed that the crime could vary “from the borders of cold-blooded murder down to the shadowy area of mercy killing or common humanity”. In that case a 9 month prison term was upheld on a 60 year old woman of unblemished character who had been a regular visitor to an 84 year old woman who was partly blind, partly deaf and suffered from arthritis. The elderly lady had persisted in various statements to the effect that she intended to take her own life, and the offender placed a plastic bag over her head. In Wallis (1983) 5 Cr App R (S) 342, a sentence of 12 months’ imprisonment was described by the Court of Appeal as “at the extreme of leniency” in a case where the offender pleaded guilty to aiding the suicide of a 17 year old flatmate by buying her tablets and alcohol, sitting Current Affairs 91

with her while she took the tablets, and not calling the ambulance until she was dead.

An individual can be criminally liable even if the person encouraged does not in fact commit or attempt to commit suicide. This offence is best categorised as incitement to commit suicide . The presence is unnecessary for aiding, abetting or counselling, particularly where the tools or materials for the suicide are supplied. So far as mens rea is concerned, the important requirement is not presence so much, as encouragement. Knowledge of an intention to commit the crime combined with something done to help the commission of it has been held to be sufficient. But knowledge of the precise details of the commission of the offence is not necessary. In the Dianne Pretty case, the European Court ruled that the Suicide Act 1961 Section 2(1) was not disproportionate. In coming to this conclusion it accepted the arguments of the United Kingdom Government that flexibility was provided for in individual cases by the fact that consent is needed from the Director of Public Prosecutions to bring a prosecution. Furthermore, the fact that a maximum sentence is provided, allowing lesser penalties to be imposed if the circumstances of the case led the court to conclude that the legislation was proportionate.

In 1976, the Criminal Law Revision Committee made a proposal in a Working Paper that consideration should be given to the creation of a new offence of mercy killing. It was proposed that a person who unlawfully killed another should not be guilty of murder or of manslaughter, but guilty of an offence punishable with two years’ imprisonment if he, from compassion, killed another person who was, or was with reasonable cause, believed to be (1) subject to great bodily pain or suffering; or (2) permanently helpless from bodily or mental incapacity; or (3) subject to rapid and incurable bodily or mental degeneration. This proposal received hostile reception and the Criminal Law Revision Committee were persuaded that the public was not prepared to countenance what was seen as a threat to the sanctity of life and, when they published their Report (14th Report, p. 53), the proposal 92 Bedeutung

was abandoned. The Law Commission submitted a different proposal to the Select Committee on Murder and Life Imprisonment where it agreed that there should be no separate offence of mercy killing, but that some cases might be covered by a new special defence reducing murder to manslaughter. The Law Commission suggested in 1988 that “the limits of the defence might be: (a) that the killing was done in order to relieve a person who was permanently subject to great bodily pain, or suffering, or permanently helpless from bodily or mental incapacity or subject to rapid and incurable mental or bodily degeneration; and (b) at a time when the accused was affected by severe emotional distress”. The latter aspect was new. Professor Leonard Leigh argued at the time in favour of a defence of “overwhelming emotional stress”. The Law Commission pointed out that such a defence would not excuse a doctor or nurse from liability to conviction of murder and that it would be wrong for the law to appear to be sanctioning such killings by “professionals”. This, in effect, would amount to an extension of the defence of diminished responsibility, explicitly bringing with the defence some cases which at present are accommodated only by a straining of the concepts beyond their proper limits and others where the defendant is not so fortunate and is convicted of murder. The British Medical Association’s Working Party on Euthanasia (May 5,1988) concluded that “An active intervention by anybody to terminate another person’s life should remain illegal. Neither doctors nor any other occupational group should be placed in a category which lessens their responsibility for their actions” and “the law should not be changed and the deliberate taking of a human life should remain a crime. This rejection of a change in the law to permit doctors to intervene to end a person’s life is just a subordination of individual well being to social policy. It is, instead, an affirmation of supreme value of the individual, no matter how worthless and hopeless that individual may feel”. The Select Committee took all these opinions into account and concluded (at para. 100) that “the introduction of a discretionary sentence for murder will enable a judge to take the full circumstances of the crime into account in passing sentence. The Com-

mittee make no recommendation for a change of law on this point”.

The litigation surrounding the arguments of Dianne Pretty, a Motor Neurone Disease sufferer who sought a review of the Directory of Public Prosecutions’ decision to refuse to undertake the path of not prosecuting her husband if he assisted her to commit suicide has brought into sharp focus issues of assisted suicide and the application of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Mrs Pretty was mentally alert and wished to control the time and manner of her dying so as to avoid the suffering and indignity she would otherwise have to endure. Because of her chronic incapacities, she could not commit suicide unaided and wished her husband to help her. He was prepared to do so provided that the Director of Public Prosecutions gave an undertaking required under the Suicide Act 1961, Section 2(4) that he would not prosecute her husband. The Director of Public Prosecutions refused to do so. Of course, if Pretty had been physically capable of taking her own life unassisted, she would as a matter of law been able to do so but this freedom has been denied her by her disability and the blanket ban under English law which prevents her husband from helping her unless the Director of Public Prosecutions makes a section 2(4) undertaking.

The Queen’s Bench Divisional Court, the House of Lords, and the European Court of Human Rights considered the arguments presented on behalf of Dianne Pretty. Central to those arguments were consideration of whether Article 3 had been violated. In the Queen’s Bench Division Court, Lord Justice Tuckey stated that Articles 2 and 3 of the Convention protected life and preserved the dignity of life. But he went on to say that they did not protect the right to procure one’s own death or confer a right to die. The right to the dignity of life was not a right to die with dignity but the right to live with as much dignity as could possibly be afforded until that life reached its natural end. In the House of Lords, Lord Bingham confirmed that Article 3 “which was complimentary to Article 2” enshrined one of the fundamental values of democratic societies. He confirmed again that

its prohibition of prescribed treatment was absolute, not derogated from even in times of war and national emergency. As Article 2 requires States to respect and safeguard the lives of individuals within their jurisdiction, so, His Lordship observed, Article 3 obliged them to respect the physical and human integrity of such individuals. But the House of Lords went on to say that there was nothing in Article 3 which bore on an individual’s right to live or to choose not to live. That was not, the House of Lords, considered its fear of application.

The absolute and unqualified prohibition on a member State inflicting the prescribed treatment required “treatment” not be given an unrestricted or extravagant meaning. The House of Lords went on to provide the boundaries of the definition of “treatment” to be applied in medical cases. In doing so, the court held that it could not be plausibly suggested that the Director of Public Prosecution or any other agent of the United Kingdom was inflicting the prescribed treatment of Mrs Pretty, whose suffering derived from her cruel disease. The report goes on to state: “By no legitimate process of interpretation could the Director of Public Prosecutions’ refusal of troleptic immunity from prosecution to Mr Pretty, if he committed a crime, be held to fall within the negative prohibition of Article 3. If, on the contrary, Article 3 might be applied and there was no arguable breach of the negative prohibition in the article, the state’s positive observation was not absolute and unqualified”. In other words, the “negative prohibition” upon States absolutely forbidding the infliction of the prescribed treatment on individuals within their jurisdiction, is absolutely forbidden, but steps appropriate or necessary to discharge the States’ “positive obligation”, arguably to ensure that the competent, terminally ill person should be entitled to seek assistance to end their life, would be more judgmental, more prone to variation from State to State, more dependant upon the opinions and beliefs of the people and less susceptible to any universal injunction. Taking into account all these national traits which the House of Lords considered relevant considerations for the

consideration of the “positive obligation, Lord Bingham, concluded that the United Kingdom was not under such a positive obligation to ensure that a competent, terminally ill person who wished but was unable to take his or her own life should be entitled to seek assistance of another without that other being exposed to the risk of prosecution. . The European Court rejected the contention that Mrs Pretty was vulnerable. A person who is contemplating suicide who is severely disabled should as a matter of course be regarded as vulnerable.

The judgement of the European Court of Human Rights, in essence reproduces all of Lord Bingham’s observations from the House of Lords, but the European Court adds: “The very essence of the Convention is respect for human dignity and human freedom. Without any way negating the principle of sanctity of life protected under the Convention. the court considers that it is under Article 8 that notions of quality of life take on significance. In an area of growing medical sophistication, combined with the longer life expectancies, many people are concerned that they should be forced to linger on in old age or in states of advanced phytsical or mental decrepitude which conflict with strongly held ideas of self and personal identity”.

In ruling that the assisted suicide of Dianne Pretty met with the requirements of Article 8(2), on the basis that States should be entitled to regulate through the operation of the general criminal law activities which are detrimental to life and safety of other individuals, the European Court differed with the opinion of the House of Lords (by majority) which excluded the possibility that a complete ban on assisted suicide might constitute an interference with the applicant’s right to respect of private life. Whilst the House of Lords have excluded the possibility that a blanket ban on assisted suicides might constitute an interference with an applicant’s right to private life, the European Court were of the view that the interference was in harmony with the requirements of Article 8(2) because States should be entitled through their domestic criminal law regime to control activities which

are detrimental to life and safety of other individuals. In short, whilst the House of Lords refused to accept (by majority) that Dianne Pretty’s Article 8 rights were capable of violation in the sphere of assisted suicide, the European Court by invoking Article 8(2) disagreed. What is interesting is that Dianne Pretty’s complaint was fully adjudicated upon the House of Lords and in reconsidering the case, the European Court of Human Rights has for the first time considered a complaint that has already been adjudicated upon the domestic courts under the Human Rights Act. It is unclear how the domestic courts should deal with a future case based upon the facts of Dianne Pretty, under Article 8. The Human Rights Act 1998, Section 2 substantably reads: “2(1) A court of tribunal determining a question which has arisen in connection with a Convention right must take into account any – (a) judgment, decision, declaration or advisory opinion of the European Court of Human Rights… Whenever made or given, so far as, in the opinion of the court or tribunal , it is relevant to the proceedings in which that question has arisen”.

Precisely which court will prevail in future argument is open to conjecture although it is reasonable to speculate that a future domestic court will take into account European decisions that were not available to domestic courts when they came to their own judgments. This seems to be enforced when one considers the attitude of Parliament during the progress of the Human Rights Bill through both houses. The Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine of Lairg, observed during the third reading of the Bill that the Human Rights Act 1998 “does not create new human rights or take any existing human rights away. It provides better and easier access to rights which already exist”. In the Government’s document “Bringing Rights Home”, the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in its preface observed that

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the Human Rights Act is intended to “give people in the United Kingdom opportunities to enforce their rights under the European Convention in British Courts rather than having to incur the cost and delay of taking a case to the European Human Rights…Court in Strasbourg”. This of itself seems to indicate that the Strasbourg approach in the Dianne Pretty case will be preferred.

Further strength is given to this argument by reading part of the text of a speech by the Lord Chancellor on the second reading of the Bill in the House of Lords where he stated: “The Bill will bring human rights home. People will be able to argue for their rights and claim their remedies under the Convention in any court or tribunal in the United Kingdom. Our courts will develop human rights throughout society. A culture of awareness of human rights will develop… the protection of human rights at home gives credibility to our foreign policy to advance the course of human rights around the world… we are not ceding new powers to Europe. The United Kingdom already accepts that Strasbourg rulings bind”. Lord Bingham of Cornhill, observed in the same debate :

“It makes no sense, and, I suggest, does not make for justice that those seeking to enforce their rights have to exhaust all their domestic remedies here before embarking on the long and costly trial to Strasbourg… British judges have a significant contribution to make in the development of the law of human rights. It is a contribution which so far we have not been permitted to make… at present disappointed litigants leave our courts believing that thre exists elsewhere a superior form of justice which our courts are not allowed to administer”. During the second reading of the Bill in the House of Lords, the Lord Chancellor went on to observe that Section 2: “requires courts in the United Kingdom to take account of the decisions of the Convention institutions in Strasbourg in their consideration of Convention points which come before them. It is entirely appropriate that our courts should draw 96 Bedeutung

on the wealth of existing jurisprudence on the Convention”.

Nevertheless, courts and tribunals in the United Kingdom though required to take judgments, decisions, declarations and opinions whether or not delivered in cases concerning the United Kingdom into account because they are potentially relevant to a proper interpretation of Convention rights, domestic courts and tribunals are not bound to follow Strasbourg judgments and other decisions. The Lord Chancellor observed that Section 2(1) of the 1998 Act does not make the Strasbourg judgments binding. He stated that the United Kingdom courts may “depart from existing to Strasbourg decisions and upon occasion it might well be appropriate to do so, and it is possible they might give a successful lead to Strasbourg”. However, “where it is relevant, he would of course expect our courts to apply Convention jurisprudence and its principles to the cases before them”. Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights carry a greater weight than decisions of the Commission, especially admissibility decisions. During the House of Commons Committee Stage, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Lord Chancellor’s Department, Mr Geoffrey Hoon, explained that the phrase “must take into account” did not mean that the domestic courts were obliged to follow Strasbourg jurisprudence. He resisted an amendment which would have substituted “may take into account”. Lord Browne-Wilkinson stated in Re H (Minors) (Abduction: Acquiescence) : “An international Convention (there the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction), expressed in different languages and intended to apply to a wide range of differing legal systems, cannot be construed differently in different jurisdictions. The Convention must have the same meaning and effect under the laws of all Contracting States”.

If there is conflict between interpreting a statute in two ways, one compatible with the convention and one not, it seems that the courts will be encouraged to choose the interpretation which is compatible”.

Nevertheless, the 1998 Act does not al-

low the court to set aside or ignore Acts of Parliament and Section 3 of the Act preserves the effect of primary legislation which is incompatible with the convention. It does the same for secondary legislation where it is inevitably incompatible because of the terms of the parent statute. Section 2(1) concludes by stating that a court or tribunal determining a question which has arisen in connection with a Convention right must take into account any judgment decision or opinion of the court of Commission whenever made or given. This phrase is intended to make “clear that the domestic courts are to take into account not only existing jurisprudence of the Convention institutions, but their future jurisprudence”. Clearly in the light of the ruling in Dianne Pretty, it is important to draw a distinction between an intention to cause death or simply to relieve pain in the application of medical treatment or substances. A court will not order a medical practitioner to treat a patient in a manner contrary to that medical practitioner’s clinical judgment and professional duty.

In a recent trial of Dr David Moor, the issue of intent became central to the jury’s deliberation. In that case, the patient was receiving oral morphine for pain relief. Dr Moor was administering diamorphine in an increased dose of the substance being administered which caused the patient to fall into a deep peaceful sleep. Later, Dr Moor was seen to inject the unconscious patient with further quantities of diamorphine. Critical to the jury’s deliberations was the intention of the doctor in administering such a large dose. The doctor’s position at trial was that the patient was suffering such intense pain which could not be relieved by surgery that he attempted to relieve that pain. To do so he administered the drug in such a dosage that he knew would virtually certainly cause death. The prosecution of Dr Moor proceeded on the basis or Mr Justice Ognall’s direction in the case of Cox by emphasising the primary intention and distinguishing the secondary effect. The test was articulated by Ognall J. in the following terms:

“We appreciate that some treatment,

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whether of a positive, therapeutic character or solely of an analgesic kind – by which I mean designed solely to alleviate pain and suffering – some treatment carries with it a serious risk to the health or even life of the patient. Doctors are frequently confronted with, no doubt, distressing dilemmas. They have to make up their minds as to whether the risk to the health or even the life of their patient, attendant upon their contemplated form of treatment, is such that the risk is, or is not, beneficial to his patient, either therapeutically or analgesically, then even though he recognises that the course carries with it a risk to life, he is fully entitled, nonetheless, to pursue it. If in those circumstances the patient dies, nobody could possibly suggest that in that situation the doctor was guilty of murder or attempted murder… the problem is obviously particularly acute in the case of those who are terminally ill and in considerable pain, if not agony… It was plainly Dr Cox’s duty to do all that was medically possible to alleviate…pain and suffering, even if the course adopted carried with it an obvious risk that, as the side effect of that treatment, her death would be rendered likely or even certain… There can be no doubt that the use of drugs to reduce pain and suffering will often be fully justified notwithstanding that it will, in fact, hasten the moment of death. What can never be lawful is the use of drugs with the primary purpose of hastening the moment of death”. In short, this approach provides a special defence to those in the medical profession. The defence would not have been available to the husband of Dianne Pretty, for instance.

In Anthony Arlidge’s paper the case of Adams is referred to. In that case, which is unreported and heard at the Central Criminal Court in 1957, Devlin J. summed-up in the following terms: “Murder is an act or series of acts done by the prisoner which were intended to kill and did in fact kill the dead woman. It does not matter for this purpose that her death was inevitable and her days were numbered. If her life was cut short by weeks or months; it is just as much murder as if it were cut short by years”.

Devlin J. went on to consider whether there was a special defence in 1957 for 98 Bedeutung

doctors. He concluded at that stage that there was not. This was confirmed in R v Arthur where Farquharson J. observed in his directions to the jury:

“There is no special law in this country that places doctors in a separate category and gives them extra protection over the rest of us”.

In Airedale National Health Service Trust v Bland, the House of Lords agreed that it was proper to remove the life support from a patient who was in a persistent vegetative state and had been so for three years. In order to maintain this condition, the patient was fed and hydrated mechanically. When this system was removed, death would be inevitable. The House of Lords characterised the removal of the equipment, not as a positive act, but as an omission to sustain life. They observed that whilst it was not lawful for a doctor to kill by a positive act, they could decide not to treat a patient who would die as a result. In short, the House of Lords were making a distinction between omission and commission. The most recent case in Moor allows the special defence in very limited circumstances when a doctor is dealing with a patient who is in pain and in the latter stages of life and so when a doctor who is trying to relieve suffering knows that his actions are virtually certain to cause death in a short time span, may rely on this special defence. It has latterly been suggested that the following direction is most appropriate by a judge to a jury:

“The prosecution must make you sure that D intended to cause P’s death. In considering his intention, you are entitled to infer he intended to cause death if you feel death was a virtually certain result of his actions (barring some unforeseen intervention) and that he appreciated that fact and that his primary intention in so acting was not purely to relieve pain and suffering but to cause death.”. The above guidelines and case law development provides some succour to the medical profession so that they may not fall foul of any allegations of murder by implication any suggestion of a violation of Article 3. They provide no assistance at all to non-medical practitioners. In Re: J (A Minor) (Wardship: Medical

Treatment), the court in considering an application relating to a child, stated certain principles, one of which will equally apply to adults: “There is no question of approving, even in a case of the most horrendous disability, a course aimed at terminating life or accelerating death. The court is concerned only with the circumstances in which steps should not be taken to prolong life”.

The court recognised that with a child aged 19 months who had suffered irreversible brain damage, the right to die with dignity, as included in Article 3, was protected by a declaration in that case that there be leave to treat the patient without artificial ventilation unless such a course seemed inappropriate to the doctor in charge given the prevailing conditions at any re-entry of that patient into hospital. In Re: J (A Minor) (Wardship: Medical Treatment), Lord Donaldson said :

“In Re: B (A Minor) Wardship: Medical Treatment it seems to me to come very near to binding authority for the proposition that there is a balancing exercise to be performed in assessing the course to be adopted in the best interests of the child. Even if it is not, I have no doubt that this should be and is the law”. The court went on to conclude that there was a strong presumption in favour of a course of action which will prolong life,. “but, even excepting the ‘cabbage’ case to be which special considerations may well apply, it is not irrebuttable… account has to been taken of the pain and suffering and the quality of life which the child will experience if life is prolonged. Account also has to be taken of the pain and suffering involved in the proposed treatment itself… in the end, there will be cases in which the answer must be that it is not in the interests of the child to subject it to treatment which will cause increased suffering and produce no commensurate benefit, giving the fullest possible weight to the child’s, and mankind’s, desire to survive”. There are some circumstances in which the application of treatment or care without consent of a mentally competent patient can amount to a violation of Article 3. Whilst the application of medical treatment without consent certainly acti-

vates Article 8 in that it may violate the privacy or physical integrity of a patient, Article 3 may also be activated if the treatment passes the necessary threshold tests. Furthermore, if a patient is forcefed, be it by medical staff or those in a position of authority, then Article 3 may be violated. The court will take into account the circumstances under which the force-feeding occurred and if it is carried out pursuant to the State’s obligation to protect life., them it will not amount to inhuman or degrading treatment.

and proportionate having regard to it profoundly invasive effect upon the appellant’s right to respect for his private life and dignity. It was said that Article 6 required the court to reach its own conclusions on the disputed issues of fact.

The Court of Appeal observed in The Queen (on application of Wilkinson) v Broadmoor Hospital that following the coming into force of the Human Rights Act 1998 and given that the prospective Convention breaches were either fundamental or such as obviously raising issues of necessity and proportionality, there was a need for courts to investigate and resolve issues relating to the application of medical treatment. The court in determining the substantive judicial review will have to reach its own view on whether the patient is capable of consenting to treatment and whether such treatment would breach his Convention rights.

Lord Justice Simon Brown stated:

If there is an issue of whether the patient is capable of consenting to treatment, a full hearing, with evidence, should be conducted to enable the court to reach its own views.

Wilkinson’s case as an interlocutory appeal from the decision of the court to refuse to order that all three doctors involved in the case should attend the substantive judicial review hearing for cross-examination upon their witness statements. The claimant, a 69 year old mental patient , complained that he had been administered with anti-psychotic medication without his consent. In short he complained that the treatment violated his rights under Article 3 and Article 8, in that the forcible injection without connect constituted degrading treatment and violate his rights to autonomy and bodily inviolability. Lord Justice Simon Brown was of the view that the court must resolve medical issues and decide between competing views in order to reach a proper judgement on the issues such as whether the treatment of Wilkinson was necessary

The Court of Appeal held that where a decision to administer medical treatment to a mental patient without his consent under the Mental Health Act 1983, s58(3)(b), was challenged by way of judicial review, the court was entitled to reach its own view on the merits of the medical decision and whether it infringed the patient’s human rights. In such a case, the patient was entitled to require the attendance of medical witnesses for cross-examination. “It seems to me that the court must inevitably now reach its own view both as to whether this appellant is indeed incapable of consenting (or refusing consent) to the treatment programme planned for him by the first respondent as his RMO…

The super-Wednesbury test (itself an Article 8 case) was, as is well known, subsequently held to be inadequate by the European Court of Human Rights in Smith and Grady v United Kingdom. I can see no basis on which an approach disapproved in the context of homosexuality in the armed forces could be supported in the present context of forcibly treating mental patients. Quite the contrary, given that this case raises also a real question of Article 3…if I am corrected in having concluded that the appellant on this challenge is entitled to have the legality of his future treatment plan determined by the court according to its own assessment of the relevant facts, then plainly the requirements of Article 6 are satisfied: the Administrative Court will conduct a merits review on evidence”. The court stated that it would be prepared to order the attendance of all the medical specialists for cross-examination at the review hearing if there were to be a fresh decision to subject W to forceful treatment. The recent case of M, Petitioner, confirmed that detention and treatment without consent of a patient under the Mental Health (Scotland) Act 1984 did not automatically amount to an infringe-

ment of the petitioner’s Convention rights. The treatment in issue concerned the administration of an anti-psychotic medicine to which administration the petitioner had to give consent. Article 8 was referred to in a consideration of whether interference with the petitioner’s rights was “necessary in a free and democratic society”. It was, of course, a matter of proportionality.

The issue of the law and how it relates to assisted suicide periodically appears in public debate. Most recently, John Zaritsky’s television documentary ‘Right to Die?’ filmed the graphic final hours of Craig Ewert, a retired professor, who travelled to Switzerland to take his own life in a ‘Dignitas’ clinic. The court have been asked to “clarify” the law on assisted suicide so that those who might seek to help a loved one take their lives may know whether they will or could be held criminally liable. Whilst one can understand that a degree of certainty is comforting in a situation which is already tragic, the law, in my view, is both clear and perhaps, just as importantly, flexible, as I argue the resume within this paper reflects.

The law, as it presently stands, allows the prosecuting authorities a reasonable discretion as to whether the action of an individual who assists in the suicide of another should attract a criminal charge. This very discretion has and will in the future allow the prosecution to exercise its power of criminal sanction both sensitively and compassionately, rather than being captured in a straight jacket of protocols, which will, in my opinion, inevitably result in more prosecutions and a restriction of a fundamental principle of justice that of the provision of mercy .

The Law is clear it is a criminal offence to aid and abet suicide. It is for the Director of Public Prosecutions to use his discretion whether charges should be brought. One of the criteria that he will use is whether a prosecution is in the public interest. Any such prosecution of vulnerable individuals, acting as they perceive, in the best interests of a loved one, suffering terminal pain, is highly unlikely.

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This case concerns the investigation by the West Mercia Constabulary into possible offences of aiding and abetting a suicide, following the death in Switzerland on 12 September 2008 of Daniel James. Daniel was 23 years old at the time of his death. He had sustained a serious spinal injury in a rugby accident in March 2007, which resulted in him suffering from tetraplegia. Daniel travelled to Switzerland with his parents in order to end his life. He carried out his wishes at premises oper-

ated by the Dignitas organisation. The police have investigated the acts of Daniel's parents and a family friend. I have concluded that there would be sufficient evidence to prosecute each of them for an offence of aiding and abetting Daniel's suicide, contrary to section 2(1) Suicide Act 1961, but that, on the particular facts of this case, a prosecution would not be in the public interest. The following paragraphs explain the reasons for my decision. DECISION ON PROSECUTION THE DEATH BY SUICIDE OF DANIEL JAMES

THE FACTS

Contact with Dignitas

7. One week after a third failed suicide attempt, Daniel contacted Dignitas in Switzerland on 20 February 2008 asking for assistance in dying. As he put it, "The primary reason I wish for your help is simply that I want to die, and due to my disability I am unable to make this hapBackground pen ... Not a day has gone by without hoping it will be 2. Daniel Mark James was born on 17 February 1985. my last ... I do not want another failed attempt". Dignitas At the time of his accident, he was in the third year of sent him a welcome letter and a statement of account. a Construction Engineering degree course at Lough8. On 9 May 2008, Dignitas wrote to Daniel to inform borough University. Daniel was a talented rugby player, him that a local doctor had considered his case and had selected for the University 1st XV in his first year and he given consent for the necessary barbiturate prescription played on eight occasions for England youth teams. to be written. The letter explained the options available. The accident Daniel chose to meet the local doctor twice in three 3. Daniel was injured in a training session at Nuneaton days, then undertake the assisted suicide procedure on Rugby Club on 12 March 2007. He was taken to hos- the following day. pital where tests and scans revealed a dislocation of the C6 and C7 vertebrae and spinal cord compression. He was transferred to the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire and remained under the management of a Consultant in Spinal Injuries, until he returned to live at home on 28 November 2007.

4. Despite every effort to alleviate the situation, Daniel was diagnosed as tetraplegic, paralysed from the chest down and with no independent hand or finger movement albeit he retained normal mobility and strength in his shoulders biceps and triceps. By November 2007, the Consultant had concluded that it was unlikely that there would ever be any significant improvement in Daniel's neurological status, saying "There is no cure for complete spinal cord injury at this stage and unfortunately there is no treatment available to either aid or produce recovery".

9. On 25 July 2008, Dignitas wrote to Daniel to request him to sign and return an authorisation form and on the same date, his schedule was sent to him. The final procedure would be carried out at a Dignitas apartment at 11am on Friday 12 September.

10. During the making of these arrangements, various individuals, including Daniel's parents and health professionals, tried in vain to persuade him to change his mind. Daniel remained resolute that no professional body could help him and that no-one would change his mind. As his psychiatrist put it in a report dated 2 July 2008, Daniel James "clearly understood that no other parties, be they professionals or family members wished him to pursue this course of action and was clearly aware that he could reverse his decision at any point. He remained firmly of the opinion that support from any agency would not be helpful for him or change his decision".

11. Daniel's parents were particularly distressed by his wish to end his own life. They tried relentlessly to perAttempts to commit suicide suade him not to do so. As Daniel's father put it in in5. The impact of his injuries on Daniel was profound. terview, "We pleaded with him not to do it and change In the early months he gave his all to prove the medi- his mind and live ... we were all so upset but at the end of cal prognosis incorrect, but ultimately he came to accept the day it was what he wanted". Later he added, "Even that his condition would never improve. up to the last second ... I hoped he'd change his mind ... 6. Daniel became suicidal, driven by his distress at his and my wife ... I know she felt exactly the same ... There predicament and his dependency on others. To his con- would be nobody happier to hear him say he'd changed sultant psychiatrist, he described himself as a "dynamic, his mind and he didn't want to do it". active, sporty young man who loved travel and being 12. However, Daniel's parents came to accept his wish independent" and that "he could not envisage a worth- to travel to Switzerland to commit suicide and although while future for himself now". Daniel frequently stated it was against their own wishes, they began to assist him his wish that he had died of his injuries on the rugby in his correspondence with Dignitas. They also agreed to field and that he was determined to end his own life. He accompany Daniel and to that end they organised flights and arranged for appropriate carers to be available to asmade several attempts to do so. 102 Bedeutung

sist their son with his daily routine.

Travel arrangements

13. From a very early stage a family friend had offered assistance to Daniel. What he initially had in mind was organising flights for Daniel to see consultants anywhere in the world if that became necessary. Once Daniel had determined that he wanted to travel to Switzerland to commit suicide, his parents took up the offer of assistance. The friend arranged a flight to Zurich returning to Bristol. He also booked Daniel a return flight in case he changed his mind.

Events in Switzerland

14. Daniel and his parents attended the two consultations. The conversation was mostly between Daniel and the doctor. It remained clear that Daniel would not change his mind. 15. On 12 September 2008 Daniel attended the clinic with his parents where a doctor helped him to take his own life. His parents were with him when he died. A death certificate confirmed that Daniel's death was 'non-natural'.

Mental capacity

16. Daniel was assessed by a Consultant Psychiatrist on a number of occasions. In her report dated 31 January 2008, the Consultant Psychiatrist observed: "Daniel's parents stated clearly that they had now come to accept his wish to die. It was evident that they were not planning to assist Daniel and would ensure that obvious means of suicide were kept out of Daniel's way, but were prepared to accept the responsibility that Daniel may at some future point attempt or succeed to take his own life at home."

balance." 18. Following Daniel's acceptance by Dignitas, doctors carried out a review of Daniel and it was agreed that Daniel continued to have the capacity to make decisions with regard to medical treatment and that his decision to engage Dignitas was not being driven by a mental illness. 19. On 27 August 2008, Daniel signed a declaration, witnessed by his doctor, that he wished to travel to Switzerland for an assisted suicide and for his body subsequently to be returned to England.

Post mortem examination

20. Daniel's body was not subjected to a full forensic post mortem examination on his return to the UK but post mortem blood samples were analysed which disclosed a fatal level of a form of barbiturates typically used for this type of procedure in Zurich.

THE EVIDENTIAL STAGE OF THE FULL CODE TEST

17. The Consultant Psychiatrist saw Daniel again at his home on 22 February 2008. She spent an hour with Daniel who was clear about his wish to die, and was also clear that this was not something he wanted to do by his own hand, particularly for the sake of his family, 21. Section 2(1) Suicide Act 1961 provides: unless there was no other option available to him. The Consultant Psychiatrist concluded, in her report dated "A person who aids, abets, counsels or procures the suicide of another, or an attempt by another to commit 11 March 2008: suicide, shall be liable on conviction on indictment to "In summary, with the benefit of having assessed Daniel imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years." on several occasions over a period of time, I am of the opinion that he has full capacity to make decisions about In order to prove the offence of aiding and abetting his medical treatment. He is fully aware of the reality Daniel's suicide, it would be necessary to prove firstly and potential finality of his decision, displays clear, co- that he took his own life and, secondly, that an individual herent, logical thinking processes in order to arrive at or individuals had aided and abetted Daniel in commithis decision and has clearly weighed alternatives in the ting suicide. Current Affairs 103

Suicide

22. The fact of the suicide can be established by the evidence and I am satisfied that these elements enable the conclusion properly to be drawn that, beyond reasonable doubt, Daniel James died as a result of suicide.

Aiding and abetting

23. The mental element that has to be proved is an intention to do the acts which the individual in question knew to be capable of helping, supporting or assisting suicide. The question is therefore whether by their various acts Daniel's parents or the family friend did, in fact, help, support or assist Daniel James to commit suicide and whether, when they did so, they knew that their acts were capable of helping, supporting or assisting him to do so.

Daniel's parents

24. Although it is necessary to examine the actions that each suspect/defendant has taken, it is clear that the actions of Daniel's parents were taken jointly. There is not absolute clarity from their interviews as to which of them did what, but there is compelling evidence of joint enterprise. 25. The acts that have taken place within the jurisdiction to aid and abet Danielâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s suicide are:

assisting him to send documentation etc to Dignitas; making payments to Dignitas from their joint bank account;

making the travel arrangements to take Daniel to Switzerland; flight.

accompanying him on the

Having considered these acts, I am satisfied that the evidential test under the Code is met. 26. Against that background, I have decided that, although neither of them assisted in the act of suicide itself, there is, on a purely objective analysis, enough evidence to provide a 'realistic prospect of conviction' against Daniel's parents under section 2(1) Suicide Act 1961.

The Family Friend

27. His involvement is significantly less than that of Daniel's parents. However, for the same reasons as apply to them, I have decided that his actions in arranging the flights and paying for those flights, knowing the purpose of the visit to Switzerland, are sufficient to provide a re104 Bedeutung

alistic prospect of conviction against him in relation to an offence of aiding and abetting Daniel James to commit suicide.

THE PUBLIC INTEREST STAGE OF THE FULL CODE TEST

28. I remind myself that paragraph 5.7 of the Code for Crown Prosecutors (the Code) states that, "A prosecution will usually take place unless there are public interest factors tending against prosecution which clearly outweigh those tending in favour ". Moreover, the more serious the offence, the more likely it is that a prosecution will be needed in the public interest.

29. I consider that the offence of aiding and abetting the suicide of another under section 2(1) Suicide Act 1961 is unique in that the critical act â&#x20AC;&#x201C; suicide â&#x20AC;&#x201C; is not itself unlawful, unlike any other aiding and abetting offence. For that reason, I have decided that many of the factors identified in the Code in favour or against a prosecution do not really apply in this case (I include within this the factors identified in paras.5.9 (b), (c), (d), (e), (j), (k), (m), (n) and (p) and 5.10 (b), (c), (d), (e), (f ), (g), (h) and (i) of the Code). 30. So far as the factors in favour of prosecution are concerned, I consider that para. 5.9(a) - whether a conviction is likely to result in a significant sentence - is relevant, but I have decided that it is not a factor in favour of prosecution in this case. On the facts set out above, I consider it very unlikely that a court would impose a custodial penalty on any of the potential defendants. None of the factors identified in Wallis (1983) 5 Cr App R (S)

342 or Hough (1984) 6 Cr App R (S) 406 apply and in all probability the sentence would be either an absolute discharge or, possibly, a small fine. 31. Although Daniel James' parents played some part in the co-ordination of the arrangements, I have decided that they were not 'ringleaders' or 'organisers' in the sense meant by para.5.9 (f ) of the Code; nor was the offence premeditated in the sense meant by para.5.9 (g) or a 'group' offence in the sense meant by para.5.9 (h). There are no grounds for believing that the offence is likely to be repeated â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a factor under para.5.9 (o). More relevant are the factors identified in paras.5.9 (e), (i) and (l). 32. The factors in paras.5.9 (e) and (l) can be taken together. Although as parents they were in a position of trust (para.(e)) and markedly older than Daniel (para. (l)), it is clear that Daniel was a mature, intelligent and fiercely independent young man with full capacity to make decisions about his medical treatment whose determination to commit suicide was not in any way influenced by the conduct or wishes of his parents â&#x20AC;&#x201C; on the contrary he proceeded in the teeth of their imploring him not to do so. The same point can be made about para.5.9(i) of the Code. On that basis, I consider that, although Daniel was vulnerable in many senses, he was not vulnerable to manipulation by his parents or the family friend. I have also considered para.5.9(q) and believe that, in the circumstances that exist here, a prosecution would not be likely to have a significant positive impact on community confidence. 33. Overall, therefore, apart from the important fact that an offence under section 2(1) Suicide Act 1961, which has a maximum penalty of 14 years imprisonment, is serious, involving as it did the loss of a life, I have decided that very few of the factors identified in para.5.9 of the Code point in favour of a prosecution in this case. 34. Turning to the factors identified in the Code as against prosecution, para.5.10 (a) is relevant (whether the penalty is likely to be nominal), and, for the reasons set out above, I have decided that it is a factor against prosecution in this case. Para 5.10 (c) may also apply to the family friend since it appears that he genuinely did not appreciate that, as a matter of law, in organising flights he was assisting in Daniel's suicide. However, I have not attached much weight to that. 35. I remind myself that the factors identified in the Code in favour or against a prosecution are not exhaustive of the public interest factors that may be relevant in any given case. It is also important to keep in mind

that Parliament has chosen to retain section 2(1) Suicide Act 1961 and a decision not to prosecute should not be taken merely because there are powerful mitigating circumstances. However, I consider that a factor that is otherwise relevant does not cease to be relevant merely because it overlaps with, or might be relevant to, mitigation. I have therefore focussed intensely on the particular facts of his case. An offence under section 2(1) Suicide Act 1961 is serious. That points in favour of a prosecution. Neither Mark and Julie James nor the family friend influenced Daniel James to commit suicide. On the contrary, his parents tried relentlessly to persuade him not to commit suicide. Daniel was a mature, intelligent and fiercely independent young man with full capacity to make decisions about his medical treatment. There is clear evidence that he had attempted to commit suicide on three occasions and that he would have made further attempts if and whenever an opportunity to do so arose. On the facts of this case, these are factors against prosecution. Although the evidential test under the Code is met, a wide range of conduct of varying degrees of culpability is caught by section 2(1) Suicide Act 1961 and, although not truly minor acts, on the facts of this case the conduct of Mark James, Julie James and the family friend was more remote than the acts under consideration in Wallis and Hough and towards the less culpable end of the spectrum. That is a factor against prosecution. Neither Daniel's parents nor the family friend stood to gain any advantage, financial or otherwise, by his death. On the contrary, for his parents, Daniel's suicide has caused them profound distress. That is a factor against prosecution. 36. Taking those factors into account and bearing in mind the observation of Lord Lane CJ in Hough that in enacting section 2(1) Suicide Act 1961, "Parliament had in mind the potential scope for disaster and malpractice in circumstances where elderly, infirm and easily suggestible people are sometimes minded to wish themselves dead", I have decided that the factors against prosecution clearly outweigh those in favour. In the circumstances I have concluded that a prosecution is not needed in the public interest.

Keir Starmer QC Director of Public Prosecutions Current Affairs 105

Art.

Bill Viola

Transfigurations

I follows:

N the Spring of 2007 I created a new work, the large scale installation Ocean Without a Shore, for the Venice Biennale. It was installed in the 15th century Church of San Gallo in a small piazza near San Marco. The work was inspired in part by Greek funerary sculpture; Michelangelo’s unfinished figures in the Accademia, Florence; Giacometti’s painted portraits from the 1950’s and 1960’s, and the writings of the 12th/13th century Andalusian Sufi mystic Ibn al’Arabi, who described a human being as

“The Self is an ocean without a shore. Gazing upon it has no beginning or end, in this world and the next.” Ibn al’Arabi (1165 – 1240) The primary inspiration for this work came from two sources. First, the palpable feeling of the presence of the dead that I sensed strongly while working in the Church of San Gallo, and had encountered many times on previous visits to Venice, especially when alone. Second, and most direct, is the following poem by the 20th century Senegalese poet and storyteller Birago Diop:

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Hearing things more than beings, listening to the voice of fire, the voice of water. Hearing in wind the weeping bushes, sighs of our forefathers. The dead are never gone: they are in the shadows. The dead are not in earth: they’re in the rustling tree, the groaning wood, water that runs, water that sleeps; they’re in the hut, in the crowd, the dead are not dead. The dead are never gone, they’re in the breast of a woman, they’re in the crying of a child, in the flaming torch. The dead are not in the earth: they’re in the dying fire, the weeping grasses, whimpering rocks, they’re in the forest, they’re in the house, the dead are not dead.

continued from page 111

African culture is keenly aware of the important role that the dead play in our lives, and has evolved many ways to acknowledge and communicate with the numerous spirits that populate the world of the living. I have often thought about how modern industrialized societies have severely curtailed the cultural mechanisms and traditions with which we honor and commune with the dead and make them a part of daily life. It is sadly ironic that in the age of burgeoning digital memory we are losing our cultural memory – humanity’s traditional wisdom. Since losing both my parents during the 1990s I have created my own ways to remember and honor them, and I’ve been highly conscious of the balance that can be attained when the three great reservoirs of humanity – The Unborn, The Living, and The Dead – are brought into balance. This, in many ways, has been the impetus for my work over the past several decades. There is an important distinction between these three realms – two exist outside of time, but the third, the realm of the living, is finite. This is why time is so precious for us, and why our actions, our only true legacy, matter so much. In the autumn of 2007, after Ocean Without a Shore was completed, I decided to revisit the large body of material we had created. For the San Gallo project I had focused on solitary individuals, but during the production we had also shot additional sequences involving multiple people and nude studies, and in the editing room had explored some alternative techniques for treating the images. It quickly became clear that a new body of work was emerging, and I set to work exploring these new dimensions. Several types of pieces emerged. The works with couples together in a single frame, and a small series of two-panel diptychs added a social and narrative dimension to the work, while the stark black and white images and nudes exposed the vulnerability and personal anguish of the individual. The last new work created was a ‘predella’-like arrangement, a row of six miniature screens called Small Saints. It shows a continuously evolving sequence of six people approaching from darkness, passing through the threshold of water and light (the central element in all of these works), and then returning to the shadows. The title of the series, Transfigurations, refers to a rare process whereby both the substance and essence of an entity is reconfigured. In physical terms, a transfiguration is a change in form, a remodeling of appearance. The word derives from the ancient Greek ‘metemorphothe,’ or ‘metamorphosis,’ suggesting a complete reformation. However, it is in the spiritual context where the word takes on its fullest meaning, referring to a moment when a person or an object is transformed not by external means but from within. The resulting change is absolute and thorough, affecting the heart and soul of the subject. Although the outward appearance can sometimes be altered in this process as well, it is not necessary. A deeper, more profound and complete transformation occurs inside, out of sight and, for a person, it reformulates the very fiber of their being, finally radiating outward to affect everything around it. In Christianity, the event known as the Transfiguration occurred to Jesus on a mountaintop in the presence of three disciples. They described that “his face shone as the sun and his garments became white as snow”, or “as light” in the original Greek. This was a sign that the Godhead and the person had momentarily become one – an affirmation of Divinity. In transfigurations of this sort, a type of energy field is said to radiate from and/or envelop the body of the holy person, a phenomenon described in many sacred texts of both East and West, and commonly depicted in numerous painted and sculptural artworks. Images of halos, tongues of flame, rings or ‘mandorlas’ of fire around the figures, common features across many cultures, are often used to represent the emergence of this inner luminosity. The language and imagery used to describe these occurrences do not need to be read literally, as the events themselves are not necessarily visual. The key point here is that the transformation of the Self, usually provoked by a profound inner revelation or an overwhelming sensation of clarity and fathomless emotion, overcomes the individual until literally a ‘new light’ dawns on him or her. As Ibn al’Arabi described it: “A morning has dawned whose darkness was you.” Sometimes this dawning is of such great magnitude that the world is destined to be changed by it. Other times, a solitary mind silently sitting alone in a room somewhere is quietly awakened, without even a whisper or ripple in the cosmos. Some of the most profound human experiences occur at times like these, arising at the outer limits of conscious awareness. These are the transition zones where experience is unstable and life is tenuous, when we are tested to our limits, and sometimes beyond. Invariably, a threshold is reached that demands to be crossed. The choice could be between light or darkness, clarity or confusion, helping or hurting, success or failure, right or wrong, life or death. Sometimes the threshold can be as impervious as a wall of stone, other times it will be as fragile and insignificant as soap bubble. On rare occasions the result of the decision will be epochal, at other times minor. Crossroads like these arise constantly throughout life, but in many instances we only become aware in retrospect how significant they were. 118 Bedeutung

I have often felt that spiritual practice and artistic practice are very similar. Both involve setting the conditions for a revelation or realization to occur – the right conditions to receive inspiration. The ground for this experience lies not in the outside world, but within the heart and mind of the individual. It is about the living spark that is carried by each and every one of us. Artists receive inspiration and sudden flashes of insight from this spark all the time, some large and some small. However, the ability to be inspired, to receive a vision, to have a realization – anytime the mind turns over and changes one’s understanding – is a fundamental characteristic of all human beings. The beauty of these rarified, special moments is that they are experienced by all people throughout their life. These are the times when the ego gets out of the way and the depths of the heart are glimpsed, the true self. The primary function of spiritual traditions, particularly in Asia, is to teach people to be aware of these moments, to increase their frequency, and to give the individual the tools to develop the deepest knowledge that comes from this – knowledge of the Self. The ancient world valued this knowledge above all, for it leads to all other forms of knowing. Inscribed at the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi are the words “Know Thyself.” The door is always open. However, the decision to cross the line, whether real or imaginary, is a serious one and the personal stakes can be high, as was revealed during the making of the work. To create the Transfigurations series, a physical apparatus was built in the studio to create a wall of water and light, providing a tangible embodiment of the inner threshold just described. Individually, the participants were given the opportunity to cross this boundary and to accept any visceral, psychological or emotional reactions that may occur. In the decision to cross over, each person confronted their own self-imposed challenges. For some it was a personal battle, or simply the desire to return to a world left behind, while for others it was an exorcism, or a purification, a rebirth, the conquering of fear, the release from suffering, the loss of innocence, the cleansing of a memory, or the healing of a wound. Most of the time I did not know the precise nature or origins of their experiences and, like everyone else, I could only witness the outward results of their personal struggles. They were given minimal instruction. My only stipulation was that everyone who came through the water must, at a certain point, make the decision to turn away from the light and return to the shadows. The time here needed to be finite. The creation of a wall of water and light as the barrier between the physical and metaphysical worlds was a conscious decision. Water and light are the elements that define our entry into the world during the birth process – the difficult passage through the wall of pain, the breaking of the water and the emergence into the light and air. In the studio we created a pathway from a zone of darkness towards the light (and towards the eye of the cameras ¬– one black-andwhite night vision to see into the darkness, the other color High-Definition to capture all the physical details of the material body). A special system was used to create an invisible sheet of water that the individuals would pass through, creating streams of luminous liquid light that appeared to emerge out of their bodies. The participants all described how the water seemed to erase their preconceived ideas and wash them into the present moment. Many wanted to go back again. In this way, the water and light threshold, a physical construction in my studio erected by a team of technicians, became an instrument in service to the inner needs of a disparate group of people – some professional actors, others artists, colleagues, friends and family members. As an artist, I find it most satisfying when an idea becomes more than just an assemblage of materials and people working to achieve a certain effect on screen. I prefer when it takes on a life of its own and is used by others to accomplish their personal goals and desires. This is precisely what happened in the studio during those days in the Spring of 2007, and all of us, crew and performers alike, were transformed, or rather, “transfigured” by the experience. It is my wish that the full depth of this experience will be conveyed to all those who encounter these works in the future.

pp. 112-117 Acceptance (2008) Performer: Weba Garretson Video stills: Kira Perov

pp. 120-125 Ocean Without a Shore (2007) Performers: Howard Ferguson, Blake Viola Video stills: Kira Perov

Note: “Transfigurations” was first published in a shorter version in Bill Viola: Transfigurations, Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Korea, 2008, editor, Kira Perov. Text © Bill Viola 2009; photographs © Kira Perov and Bill Viola 2009

Art 119

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Art 121

DONDERSLAG John Strutton

Images on pp. 127-132 are from the drawing series 777 (2000-2009), watercolour and ink on paper

Image on p. 133 is from the drawing series Decorations for a Lost Cause (2006-2009), watercolour, pencil and gouache on paper

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Art 135

136 Bedeutung

138 Bedeutung

Art 139

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Art 141

ALLES GLEICH SCHWER

HELMUT LANG

SĂŠance de Travail, 1993-1999, 1998 video projection on mirror 450"x126"/1143x320cm projection dimensions variable

NEVILLE WAKEFIELD INTERVIEWS HELMUT LANG

Helmut Lang, Long Island ÂŠ Bruce Weber, 2008

The title of your show— “Alles Gleich Schwer”—can be interpreted in a number of different ways. But in its most straightforward incarnation it suggests that everything is of the same weight, by which I take it you mean that all activities are in some way equal.

As one of Jenny Holzer‘s works states, “Everyone’s work is equally important.” I believe that the approach of creative equality whatever one does is one of the basic rules of human coexistence. There is a similar kind of importance to mastering a process regardless of what it is that one is attempting to achieve. But consequently, I want it to be considered on another level so that it does not only suggest that things have the same difficulty or weight through the commitment of activity. I wanted “Alles Gleich Schwer” to be concerned with the ideas and feelings that are fundamental to human existence, a consideration for everyone’s evaluation of which weight or importance one wants to contribute for oneself in a time of changing values.

Is the implication there’s no hierarchy between the different kinds of activity that you’ve chosen to pursue?

For me personally, there is no hierarchy. Most of the pieces are new works that are shown for the first time. Séance de travail 1993–1999 is a piece that was a collaboration with Jenny Holzer and Louise Bourgeois, and I’m wondering the extent to which it functions as a retrospective element, both in that it’s comes from a previous body of work and also it speaks to your own past in a way.

Séance de travail 1993–1999 was created in 1998 and I feel it has enough relevance today. It reflects excerpts of my work, but equally important, it extends to the earliest expressions of 152 Bedeutung

individual and social existence. The audience gets involved without asking and becomes part of the piece itself. In the sense that it collapses the idea of projection and reflection into a single plane?

And you have to take it from there. Arbor is the largest of the new works. How did it come about?

Arbor is about the maypole formalities. It carries with it a horizontal and vertical communication implemented. The symbolic aspect travels in both directions. The symbolism being that the pole is connected to the underworld and also the human and the spiritual?

I see it as a vertical conductor but also as an element that connects humans. It has the capacity to be a transmitter of events and meanings and although it has mythological and folkloric resonances, I feel it is quite relevant today. And then there’s the symbolic aspect, which has to do with the phallus, fertility and the ritual celebration of potential.

The ritual celebration of potential is probably the most elegant association connection with phallus and fertility I have ever heard anybody say. The ritual celebration of potential includes for me a natural as well as a man-made angle. And to that extent, it’s an interesting connection with the Life Form pieces, which are also about growth and potential. In referring to both planting beds and graves, they also suggest a kind of short-circuiting of life and death.

The beds represent a living force, and while life implements death, it leads to an engagement in existence and inevitability, an audit of life forms themselves. It’s interesting that, given the symbolic

richness to all of this work—the maypole with its invocation of pagan fertility rites, the Life Forms’ symbolisms in terms of life and death and rest and activity and all of that stuff—you still seem more interested in the formal problems or solutions. Is the symbolic content secondary? Do you even think about it at all?

What happens to me in the work process intellectually and form-wise is that I approach a piece with a perception or an idea, which then is condensed and layered, broken up and again collected and suddenly taken over by another. It becomes an interactive struggle for balance for the importance of form and the importance of content. Right. And also I think there’s no such thing as free association [laughs]. You’re always doing things that describe your preoccupations, even if you don’t start out from that premise.

I guess unconscious and actual content often merge… It’s giving form to what you don’t know, as opposed to describing what you do.

I like the idea of shedding any kind of preconception. It’s interesting, because when we first started talking about it there were pieces that were much more figurative, in the sense that they seemed to invoke, or actually demand, a human body.

I probably started there unconsciously because of what I know, but it became clear that it was not the issue that interested me right now. I became more involved with the idea of human needs and not the human form. Some of the iconography you’ve worked with in the past has found its way into the show. I’m thinking particularly of the mirror ball and the eagles, both of which existed as elements in the design of your New York store. And I’m wondering what kind of transformation you’ve had to make to bring them into this very different realm.

Both pieces served me as raw material. They have very traditional meanings and are highly ornate. I think I sometimes demand change for myself and, consequently, I implement change of context, form and content of the found object.

sculpture and painting. What I’m interested in is replacement forms that break the classical frames.

In terms of the invocation of freedom, power, fascism and so on, it’s very loaded material.

[Laughs] But also protection. They are also end pieces, obstacles to be overcome that mediate between the interior and the exterior.

So it became impossible not to engage this object into a broader cultural ecology and dismantle the traditional boundaries and values of aesthetic and cultural status. It’s interesting that the formal pairing and mirroring that runs through the work also makes itself felt in the symbolic content, which seems often to be about marriage of opposites, life and death, freedom and fascism, and so on. The eagles now seem more like sculptures of angels…of heavenly beings rather than terrestrial power.

I wanted them to be relieved from the pressure of an artifact and to be looked at as openly as possible. Yeah, of all the pieces that’s maybe the most dramatic intervention into a kind of pre-constituted idea.

The perception of feelings has changed with the redefinition of form and surface, which I think is consequently what I am interested in. [Laughs] Lovingly crafted and equally lovingly destroyed…

Louise Bourgeois said recently “I have always said that materials are just materials and that they are there to serve you. The subject is never the materials but what you want to express”. I believed her. Would you say that’s also true of the bumper pieces?

I’d say that to the extent that they use recycled and manufactured materials they still speak to that idea. Not having a formal training, I felt less obliged to use traditional distinctions between

And like relationships, they have this history of impact and abuse which itself carries a certain kind of beauty.

You describe your working process as essentially reductive. It seems that you often start out with ideas and materials that are quite elaborate and then gradually strip them of ornament and tradition to become these quite minimal enigmatic forms.

I only find it interesting if it is the logical consequence of opulence and if the work is demanding it. Right. When we first started talking, you were following a direction that seemed to have much more to do with notions of skin and sentience, and that starting point seems to almost be entirely stripped away. I was thinking about the “surrogate skins,” which are perhaps the clearest expression of that original intention, and it struck me that even there you are using accumulation as a form of erasure. .

The surrogate skins for me are layers of opportunities and contain on each layer ideas and possibilities. Every layer is equally important. In their invincible collectiveness they accumulate a certain weight. The last layer is literally the “skin,” and the final result, although it could have been stopped nearly at any given point. Sometimes it feels almost as if what you don’t do is as important as what you do.

Yes, it is a process of accumulation, elimination and knowing when the piece is strong enough to fight you. How does this relate to the idea of the ideal, and particularly the role of imperfection as compromising something that becomes too pure.

I would not even call it an imperfection. It is rather that in the deviation from the expected of the unexpected, it is possible to find the new and the need for mystery and enchantment. Do you believe in the life of objects? I mean, without getting too corny about it, that there is an aspect of animism, of spirit core, to some of this.

Not in a rigid sense. The idea of soul is simply about a certain form of impression that you want your object to have, comparable in a sense to when you see a person for the first time and look at them but don’t speak to them. You take away a self-made impression that goes beyond appearances, and you yourself influenced that vision. This aim is true to the object. Is that encounter also reflective of another encounter—namely, between classicism and modernism—that has in some way or another underpinned your sensibility? I’m wondering about the extent to which modernism is about the introduction of impurity into classical ideals.

I’m only interested in classicism if it is genuine and not used to cover weakness. The need of modernism is implemented in reevaluating the relevance of former guidance, symbol and rules. It’s the difference, perhaps, between a process of discovery and one of illustration? I think this kind of working process also allows the end result to be a question rather than an answer, and I suspect that is important to you.

My initial ideas are never my outcome—rather, a framework of thought. I want the end result to be visually strong and emotionally layered. It’s perhaps the Zen version of the final outcome—that the exhaustion of the process of looking is itself the end result.

That conclusion might pre-date any formal art. Art 153

pp. 144-145: Arbor, 2008, oak/iron/rubber/PVC, 486”x204”x174”/1234x518x442cm pp. 146-147: Life Forms, 2008, oak/sheepskin/tar, 111”x91”x6”/281x231x15cm p. 148: Untitled, 2008 (used), rubber/steel/gold/pigment, 26”x28”x7.5”/66x70x19cm p. 149: Next Ever After, 2007, mixed media on mirrored glass, 36”x36”x36”/91x91x91cm pp. 154-155: Three, 2008, mahogany/tar, various dimensions p. 157: Surrogate, 2008, cotton/tar/mixed media, 69”x52”x1”/175x132x2.5cm

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glimpse life and death Nadja Argyropoulou curates exclusively for this issue of Bedeutung an exhibition with images of works form the Dakis Joannou collection. Art 159

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A glimpse into life and death in the Dakis Joannou Collection - curated by Nadja Argyropoulou

Opening text: Nikos Gavriil Pentzikis, O Pethamenos ke i Anastasi (The Dead Man and the Resurrection), editions Agra, Athens, 1987, p.59 “…… Sickened by the surrounding ugliness, he was seeking an ideal form to strengthen him. He was seeking the cleanness that would transport him to a paradise, where matter would be devoid of its ugly weight….He arrived at the shadowy plaza, where there was a water source to quench his thirst. The most noble beauty, a fairy of a woman, was seated by the water…. To satisfy his thirst, he had to bend and drink like beasts do. He bent, and, forced, he drank. He saw the water. It was polluted from blood clots and rotten meat. A foot ending in deadened toes and fallen nails, with wide ulcerations, as if from an incurable and excruciatingly painful thromboagiitis. The foot was naked in the water as was the rest of the body, seated where -from a far- he thought he’d seen the noble beauty. The whole body was horribly distorted from swells and ulcerations, so much so that no gender was visible; it could have been a man. Ants were crawling on her….” (translation: N. Argyropoulou)

WORKS + URS FISCHER Untitled (Hole), 2007 Cast aluminium 5,4 x 3,4 x 2,7 m + PAUL McCARTHY Steven, 2007 Figurine; white silicone 118.1 x 67.3 x 57.1 cm + PAUL McCARTHY Mimi, 2006/2008 Pink silicone rubber, steel 73.7 x 61 x 40.6 cm + SETH PRICE Film / Right, 2006 16 mm film, 14 minutes + JEFF KOONS Vest, 1985 Bronze 55,8 x 41,9 x 12,7 cm + PAUL CHAN My Laws are my Whores, 2008 Charcoal on paper 100,3 x 69,9 cm each, 4,36 x 2,3 meters overall + PAWEL ALTHAMER Schedule of the Crucifix, 2002-2005 Oak wood, leather, metal Cross: 250x200x15 cm; ladder: 220cm high, width variable; paravent: 160 cm high, width variable Here, installation view and performance documentation, Chiesa di San Matteo, Lucca, 2002 +

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+ TIM NOBLE & SUE WEBSTER Masters of the Universe, 1998 – 2000 Translucent resin, fibreglass, plastic and human hair 137,1 x 68,5 x 78,7 cm Here, photos of work in progress + URS FISCHER Thinking about Stortebeker (Negative Napoleon), 2005 18 loose prints on Epson Enhanced Matte Paper Each 56 x 41 cm + ANNA GASKELL Untitled #91 (half life), 2002 C-print 156,2 x 190 cm + CLEGG & GUTTMANN A Contemplation on a Bust, 1987 Cibachrome behind Plexiglas 183 x 122 cm + MARTIN KIPPENBERGER Memorial of the Good Old Time, 1987 Mixed media, rubber, plywood 182,8 x 375,9 x 210,8 cm + VERNE DAWSON Clown Aerialist, 2004 Oil on canvas 40,64 x 50,80 cm + NIKOS NAVRIDIS Traps, 1998 Video installation Here still from, Trap II, The yellow one, 15:56’’ + TIM HAWKINSON Penitent, 1994 Rawhide dog chews and slide whistle; motorized, with sound 121,9 x 45,7 x 45,7 cm Photo: Stefan Altenburger +

+ ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE Lisa Lyon, 1982 Silver gelatin photograph 50,8 x 40,6 cm + MAURIZIO CATTELAN Mother, 1999 Black and white photograph in black wooden frame 100 x 113,7 cm + ROBERT GOBER Two Breasts, 1990 Wax pigment Left: 21 x 17,8 x 10 cm, right: 18,5 x 17,8 x 10,5 cm + CHRISTIANA SOULOU I Accept, If You Can Tolerate Me Silently, 1982 Colored pencils on paper 25 x 18 cm Photo: Dimitris Tamviskos + GABRIEL OROZCO Still Waterfall, 1997 Video projection 274,3 x 381 cm + URS FISCHER Thinking about Stortebeker (Smoke Mouth Eye), 2005 18 loose prints on Epson Enhanced Matte Paper Each 56 x 41 cm + GREGOR SCHNEIDER Totes Haus u r, Gute Mutter, 2002 Mixed media 230 x 110 x 210 cm Photo: Stefan Altenburger + ANDRO WEKUA Sneakers 1, 2008 Sculpture, wax figure, aluminium casted table and pallet, akrystal board, ceramic shoes 150 x 185 x 100 cm +

+ CHRISTIAN MARCLAY Boneyard, 1990 750 Telephone Receivers; Hydrostone cast originally Dimensions variable + HARIS EPAMINONDA Untitled 04, 2005/06 Collage 32 x 25 cm, framed: 54,5 x 44,5 cm + DOROTA JURCZAK Hung, 2005 Bronze 38,5 x 11 x 4 cm + URS FISCHER Thinking about Stortebeker (Eye Cum Tear), 2005 18 loose prints on Epson Enhanced Matte Paper Each 56 x 41 cm + CHRIS JOHANSON Untitled (Human), 2004 Acrylic on paper 61 x 47,7 cm Photo: Stefan Altenburger + TIM NOBLE & SUE WEBSTER Black Narcissus, 2006 Black poly-sulphide rubber, wood, light projector Sculpture dimensions: 38 x 72 x 60cm Plinth dimensions: 30.5 x 30.5 x 91.5cm Here, work in progress at Tim Noble & Sue Webster studio, London + CHARLES RAY Revolution Counter-Revolution, 1990 Carved wooden elements, steel, fabric and mechanical elements Installed dimensions: 292,1 x 416,6 x 416,6 cm Here, work in progress

“A glimpse into life and death in the Dakis Joannou Collection” was designed by k2design. Creative Director: Alexis Marinis

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Literature.

The Burning Boy by Martin Browning

In the invocation to Book VII of Paradise Lost, Milton fears lest his fate be like Orpheus’s— to be torn apart by the uncomprehending practitioners of oppression and violence—and he looks to his own muse to protect him, as Orpheus’s mother Calliope could not, from the barbarous dissonance Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears To rapture, till the savage clamour drowned Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse defend Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores: For thou art heavenly, she an empty dream. Milton treats Calliope’s case with extreme and poignant tenderness. She is full of grief that she could not defend her son. This is a recurrent theme in Milton. Earlier in Paradise Lost, for example, Proserpine gathering flowers is herself gathered like a flower by Dis, the god of the dead, “which cost Ceres all that pain / To seek her through the world”. But Ceres does not exist, any more than Calliope does. Both are empty dreams. Why the reproach of the word “empty”? At whom is it directed? Whose empty dream is Calliope? There are various answers: the empty dreams of classical mythology, whose fabulists related (erring there as well) the fall of Mulciber in Book I; the empty dream of a reader who might seek from an epic the assurances of a less severe, more Keatsian, system of divinity than the austere Christianity that remains to the unillusioned Milton; thus the empty dream of a naïve younger Milton, who once, in a more optimistic period, might have staked his hopes on belief in such a muse, such a vocation. All of these answers are really just one answer: the rebuke is directed at those who had hoped to find Calliope a saving muse; most of all, to Calliope herself, whose empty dream it was to believe she could save Orpheus. She cannot save him because she is an empty dream. She must suffer both his death and her own failure to be real. Her unreality doesn’t exempt her from pain and sympathy: it is the cause and content of her pain. This is the pain of mortality: it is the pain Orpheus felt at being unable to save his “halfregained Eurydice” (“L’Allegro”). “Half-regained” because even though Orpheus “made Hell grant what Love did seek” (“Il Penseroso”), what Love sought was a mortal being, and so a being whose presence can never be complete. Contrast this with the immortal experience of Eden in Paradise Lost, where Adam dreams that he sees the newly created Eve: when she disappears from his dream he wakes to find her or forever to deplore her loss, but Adam and Eve are heavenly or all but heavenly, she is not an empty dream, not a half-being, and he regains her wholly. Milton’s own experience has been far more like Orpheus’s. When he dreams of his dead wife (in Sonnet 23), he tries to embrace her, but she flees like Eurydice back into the darkness and absence and emptiness that is his blind and mortal life.

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For Milton the most painful part of morality, and its defining condition, is not facing one’s own death, but facing one’s powerlessness to save another being from his mortality. The muse has become mortal, as we all do. The boy she seeks to save has become mortal, as we all do. Her mortality consists most fully in her inability to prevent his mortality. His mortality consists most fully in her powerlessness to prevent it. He becomes mortal when he sees his mother cannot save him. She becomes mortal when she sees that he sees this. It is only as fragile, unreal mortals, with our inevitable tropism towards dissolution, that they can interact, and (they now realize) that they have ever interacted. Becoming mortal is the central theme of Paradise Lost, which describes how the mortal taste of the fruit “Brought death into the world and all our woe”. That ordering matters: death leads to woe, to the experience of mourning the death of others (Adam explicitly chooses to follow Eve into a world of death because the woe of surviving her is worse to him than the woe of dying himself ). And becoming mortal is the central theme and problem of much poetry, especially the poetry of old age. What becomes of the world when it becomes unreal? How can one make of that unreality something that matters? Wallace Stevens, in old age, wrote over and over of the way ageing transmogrified the world and made it unreal. He remembers a childhood house seventy years later: “Upstairs, the windows will be lighted, not the rooms”. His mother, bending down to kiss him, is preserved as a pure eidetic memory of her dangling necklace: “The necklace is a carving, not a kiss”. This is why in another late poem he wonders “Have I lived a skeleton's life / As a disbeliever in reality, / A countryman of all the bones of the world” even though he remembers a time when he did not write poems about “what skeletons think about”. He once did not, but now he does: “nothing has been changed except what is / Unreal, as if nothing had been changed at all”. But now he is a countryman of everything that is unreal, his only country (Stevens is almost certainly thinking of Yeats) the country of old men. He loses his sense of once having lived in reality. The past too has become unreal, the sense of once having had a sense that the world was real is dissipating. Stevens and Milton present two radical examples of the most absorbing fact of literary vocation: that you end up devoting your life to love of the unreal. This is the same story Proust tells. The world becomes unreal anyway, the trajectory of life is a trajectory towards disbelief in reality, so poetry provides a way to tutor the soul to love what is unreal. Since what becomes unreal is our relation to other people, themselves mortal and unreal—Orpheus, Eurydice, Calliope, the mother, the woman met at the edge of a field seventy years ago (from Stevens’s “The Rock”)—loving what is unreal means loving others as you love poetry. Loving poetry is one way for mortals to love mortals. This sort of poetry is an extension and also an antithesis of conventional love poetry. We’re used to thinking of poetry as an instrument of amorous expression. It is addressed to the beloved, and says something like, “Look how deep I am, and love me for that”. There is a wide range of expressive tonalities for such poetry: Love me because I am so ebullient, love

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me because I am so in love with you, love me because we are so happy together, love me because I am so sad, love me because I mourn your death so much. Such poetry, no matter how fictive its occasion or tone or performance, is all essentially second person. It courts the reader, it courts the beloved. They need not be the same: one way of courting someone is to perform the courtship of someone else. This is what actors do, and the genres of movies or plays about love require actors to do that. Love me, Humphrey Bogart, because of the sad and tragic way I love Ingrid Bergman. Love me, Grace Kelly, because of the delightful and perky way I love James Stewart. Love me, Fred Astaire, because of the ebulliently resourceful way I love Ginger Rogers. But the poetry of unreality, the poetry of old age (as we may call it for short), is not a poetry of courtship but of meditation. It is often most helpful—to the poet, to the reader—as love poetry, but this is love without courtship, without an eloquence meant primarily to appeal to the addressee of the poem (an appeal to grant the love whose withholding has tested the poet and prompted his or her eloquence). The way the poetry of unreality is different is clearest when it manifests itself (as in the example of Calliope or Ceres) as a meditation on the asymmetric love for the child. But the parent’s love for the mortal child (whatever its biological source) is not the source of the paradigm that I wish to bring out here, but a manifestation of it. Put otherwise, the child may be “the child unanswered in her” (Alvin Feinman), or “a child asleep in its own life” (Stevens again), or the old woman who “stands before me as a living child” (Yeats), or one’s own lost childhood, as in Merrill or Proust. The love of a mortal or broken or helpless or vulnerable being, when it cannot rescue that mortal, broken, helpless, vulnerable being, represents the one who loves that being as equally helpless. Freud says that parental narcissism, undermined by the relentless attacks of reality, imagines the immortality of the child. But parents finally understand their own mortality when they recognize the mortality of the child: the child too is mortal, and no refuge for the parents’ lost immortality. It’s the recognition of the mortality, of the unreality, of the child that leads, we could say, to real love rather than the desperately escapist overestimation that Freud thought parental love amounted to. Both parent and child, Calliope and Orpheus, are unreal, since each would depend for its reality on the reality of the other; both are unable to defend themselves, or each other, from unreality, and so both suffer life’s vector towards exclusion from the shared world, from shared reality. Diotima, in The Symposium, calls Love the child of Plenty and Poverty. Although much of her account is allegorical, her story is partly about the relationship of allegorical figures to our experience of others. Allegories are abstractions. But in The Symposium, Love is not an abstraction but (says Diotima) a daemon, neither human nor god, but anthropomorphic nevertheless, personified in a way that his allegorical begetters are not. His quasihelplessness is a result of this personification, of his being like us, not like the abstract gods of the ideal realm. He is like us because he stands for our love and need and defeated expectation, and he is the object of our love and need and expectation as well. While under his aspect of resourceful plenty, he may stand for the display of everything the lover wishes to

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use to court the beloved, but the helplessness I am focusing on makes him like the child who embodies love in all its helplessness, who embodies all the ways that love cannot defend what is loved, nor give succour to the lover. Love, personified, stands for the absolute vulnerability of a being to whom there is nothing we can offer but love (Philip Pullman’s daemons, in the trilogy His Dark Materials, are perfect instances of what I have in mind). Poems that personify love this way are poems that personify the love we (readers, poets) feel for poems which are expressions of loss and need and vulnerability and helplessness, for poems reduced to the poverty of having only intensified expressiveness left to them. This is a tautology, perhaps, which comes down to the idea that sad poems are sad. But it’s also a deep and impressive fact that sad poems are sad. Consider Shelley’s “When the Lamp is Shattered”: When hearts have once mingled, Love first leaves the well-built nest; The weak one is singled To endure what it once possessed. O Love! who bewailest The frailty of all things here, Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home, and your bier? Its passions will rock thee, As the storms rock the ravens on high; Bright reason will mock thee, Like the sun from a wintry sky. From thy nest every rafter Will rot, and thine eagle home Leave thee naked to laughter, When leaves fall and cold winds come. Love leaves the nest, but then it turns out that Love is still there, only not a god any more but frail and exposed and mortal (“your bier”): unreal. Here too love is a child (leaving the nest), or rather the fragile, mortal child is a figure for love, at once object and relationship. The being is the relationship, our relationship with the unreal world. Love here is a kind of counter-allegory: it is the abandoned lover who allegorizes the pain of being Love, of experiencing what Love experiences, allegorizes Love’s pain. Love is a ruined god. From its eagle home—its position of divine superiority—it laments sublunary frailty, but then it participates in this frailty, suffering the very thing it condemns, estranged from its own divine and allegorical origin, its eagle home. “Why choose you the frailest?” is Shelley’s complaint. But it’s a complaint, not against Love, but about the very experience that Love too is described as having.

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Another example, ultimately very similar to Shelley’s: Elizabeth Bishop’s “Casabianca”, which takes as its occasion Felicia Hemans’s famous tear-jerker: Love’s the boy stood on the burning deck trying to recite “The boy stood on the burning deck.” Love’s the son stood stammering elocution while the poor ship in flames went down. Love’s the obstinate boy, the ship, even the swimming sailors, who would like a schoolroom platform, too, or an excuse to stay on deck. And love’s the burning boy. The subject in this erotic elogy is the faithfulness of love: Bishop describes love as an attempt at faithfulness to its own impulse even when the relationship is on the rocks. Love becomes, not the immortal “burning babe” of Southwell’s sixteenth century devotional poem, but the boy who tries to recite Hemans’s “Casabianca”, the poem about the boy who remains faithful to his dead father’s order to stay on deck till relieved. Young Casabianca’s “faithful heart” gives Bishop a model for the faithfulness she requires of herself, even as the relationship founders. In this first stanza love is her avatar: it is she who is trying to recite a poem of love’s faithfulness even as the ship goes down. The difference between herself and Hemans’s Casabianca is that he is heroically eloquent—“Say, Father say / If yet my task be done?” “Speak father!....If I may yet be gone!” “My Father! must I stay?”—whereas she, speaking as Love, is desperately “stammering elocution,” trying to ignore the disaster as it occurs and to treat the deck as “a schoolroom platform” (which it is as well, for the sailors who are instructed by the sight; there’s a memory here of Emerson’s account of drowning sailors here: “Well, they had a right to their eyebeams, and all the rest was fate”). I think that Bishop, connoisseur of dreams, is thinking of a particular burning boy in “Casabianca”: the burning boy in the famous dream that Freud retells at the beginning of Chapter Seven of The Interpretation of Dreams, “the dream of the burning child” (p. 572), in which once again dream and reproach come together, as they have in Paradise Lost: A father had been watching beside his child’s sick-bed for days and nights on end. After the child had died, he went into the next room to lie down, but left the door open so that he could see from his bedroom into the room in which his child’s body was laid out, with tall candles standing round it. An old man had been engaged to keep watch over it, and sat beside the body muttering prayers. After a few hours’ sleep, the father had a dream that his child was standing beside his bed, caught him by the arm and whispered to him reproachfully: ‘Father, don’t you see I’m burning?’. He woke up, noticed a bright glare of light from the next room, hurried into it and found that the old watchman had dropped off to sleep

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and that the wrappings and one of the arms of his beloved child’s dead body had been burned by a lighted candle that had fallen on them (pp. 547-548). As Freud interprets the dream, the abandoned child is granted a momentary prolongation of life. “I’m burning” is something the boy did say in his fever; Lacan will suggest that the boy sought to wake his father up on the first onset of his illness, but that his father did not see that he really was burning up. Now the child exists only as abandoned. The father can keep hold of the child, extend his life or his personification, only by not waking up to save the child (the child’s body) from the flames. Lacan notes that there are three sleepers in the story: the father, the old man, and the dead child who looks like sleep. The father can only prolong the existence of his son if, like the old man, he does not wake up. The old man should be awake, or should sleep competently, but the task of dreaming the child awake again—of sustaining a vigil by abandoning a vigil—devolves upon the father. He joins his son in sleep, but in doing so he abandons his son. And yet the only way to join him is to abandon him. Freud will later say that a deep motivation of this dream, as of every dream, is the wish to prolong sleep (“O, such another sleep, that he might see but such another child!”); but here that wish might be thought to be derivative of a wish to join the child in the sleep that sustains and abandons him. As in Hemans’s “Casabianca” as Bishop might have wished to read it, the unconscious father finds in his own obliviousness to the actual burning boy the only way to personify that boy, to make him continue to personify Love. Lacan calls this “the missed reality,” the encounter that can take place only as a missed encounter, since to sleep is to miss the danger that in any case it is now too late to divert (the fever, the flames), while to wake to the actual child is to wake to his death (the sleep from which he will not awaken), as Milton does in Sonnet 23. In Lacan’s quick summary of the work of mourning, the separateness and loss of the child is the central fact that makes itself felt “by means of reality:” the real burning represents the child’s absence. Reality thus becomes not the terminus but the representational medium for the irreality, or inaccessibility, or abandonment, or loss, or disappearance of the child: the irreality which is everything that makes the child mortal, everything that the child’s life and reality consists in. Confronted with this child, all I can do is acknowledge that he is burning, or that he is dead, and that he knows my love can’t save him. If this is a reproach, its affective charge adds (like all guilt) to the intensity of feeling. We are both empty dreams, and all we have for each other, all we are for each other, is love. The only communion we have with each other is in the language in which I personify Love as mortal like me, and so mourn myself and Love and they boy I love because he cannot transcend mortal language. He can only stammer elocution, and he too would fail, like Calliope, in his performance on the schoolroom platform: he is mortal and the poetry he stammers is mortal, but he is still Love, still the burning boy, more faithful to us than reality.

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Bishop, Elizabeth, The Complete Poems, 1927-1979, New York (Farrar, Straus & Giroux): 1983 Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. James Strachey, New York (Avon): 1972. Lacan, Jacques, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, trans. Ala, Sheridan, New York (Norton): 1973 Steven, Wallace, The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play, ed. Holly Stevens, New York (Vintage): 1972

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Sarah Wallis and Svetlana Palmer are currently editing their forthcoming book–a collection of diary entries drawn

from children who grew up, loved, fought and, in some cases, died during the second world war. Their project offers the chance to bring together– in one volume and in English–the beautifully written and evocative, though largely unknown day-by-day accounts of growing up on different sides of the conflict. Wallis and Palmer’s previous book of letters and diaries from the First World War, A War in Words, included two children’s diaries and it was the strength of their stories, which inspired them to create a uniquely original book on the Second World War as experienced exclusively by the young. The authors selected seventeen accounts in all, interweaving in one chapter the diaries of a Japanese student turned Kamikaze pilot, a New York schoolboy and a young US naval recruit; in another the diaries of a besieged Leningrad schoolboy and an underage German soldier. As the narrative of the book and the war progresses, seven of the young diarists die while nine live to see the war’s end. Whether at home, imprisoned, evacuated or fighting as soldiers and partisans, all desperately hope to survive. The entries focus less on dying and more on living, on family, friends, school, love, a first kiss, fear and hope.

Children's Diaries from WWII

The following extracts are from a chapter, currently in progress, from the second part of the book, which follows Germany’s demise. Three teenagers, one French and another a Polish schoolgirl and then a Jewish Pole and young man, wait in the summer of 1944 for their eagerly anticipated liberation–the Poles for the Soviet Troops, the French girl for the Allies– with tragically different consequences.

“Dear God do not shatter our enormous hopes” Paris and Warsaw waiting for liberation summer 1944

From the diary of 17-year-old Parisian, Micheline Singer, which she had kept throughout her four years living under German occupation. 11th April 1944 What a day. I will never forget it. I don’t know how to begin to write about what happened to me in the evening. Before going to bed I wanted to walk [my dog] Darak, like I do every evening, but just as I shut the gate behind me, Karl arrived. He wasn’t drunk but you could see that he’d been drinking. He took my hand and I did not like it. However, I didn’t say anything. Then, suddenly, he wanted to take me in his arms. I defended myself and he said he wanted just one kiss, he said that I didn’t understand, he’d spent two years in Russia and hadn’t talked to a woman. We kept repeating ourselves, him saying “just one kiss”, me saying that I couldn’t because I didn’t love him. When I tried to shut the gate on him, he kissed my hands through the slats and it felt strange. He said he hadn’t slept since he met me and thought of nothing but me. I said he was drunk, he said not drunk enough, I tried to get drunk but failed. Then suddenly he changed his mind and said he would go, as he didn’t want me to go round saying the Germans behave like pigs. Unfortunately, I didn’t hold my tongue and let him go but shrugged my shoulders and asked him why I would be so stupid as to make all Germans responsible for the behaviour of one. I don’t know why but this made him furious. He pushed open the gate, got out his little revolver and said it’s simple, either kiss me or I’ll kill your dog. So I let him kiss me. Then I ran inside wiping my mouth with the whole length of my arm. I think he just stood there. I was terrified when I got to my room because my shutters don’t close properly. I undressed somehow, tried to read Les Fleurs du Mal but couldn’t concentrate, I kept thinking he was going to come back and attack me. I heard the clock strike every hour all night long. I can’t believe how afraid I was.

Six weeks later… Tuesday 6th June I went down early with Darak to queue up for milk. And in the queue what should I hear: the English and the Americans have arrived in Normandy. I ran upstairs as fast as I could and announced the news to Mummy. All excited we ran to wake up Nicole who was still asleep. But I have been waiting so long for the landing, have dreamt of it so often that it almost seemed normal. Let them hold on this time! My God do not shatter our enormous hopes. Monday 10th July Caen has been taken and we have rediscovered hope. We spent the weekend tanning ourselves in the sun. My dream is to be really sun-tanned when the English arrive. Victory is so near and yet so far. But this time, I am sure it is only a matter of days. My dear notebook, you are finished! I really thought it would be you who would see Victory, which is at once so near and yet so far. But now I really am convinced it is only a matter of days and I am only sorry it will not light up these pages because in the

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future I am sure you will be my favourite notebook. RESOLUTIONS FOR THE FUTURE:

I will be hard, so no one can make me suffer. I will be depraved so men will love me. I will be strong and cruel.

From the diary of 14-year-old Wanda Przybylska written in a small village outside Warsaw, as Poles prepared to fight, anticipating the arrival of Soviet troops after nearly five years living under German occupation. Saturday 28th July 1944 No, it’s really bad now – a whole week of being bombed! And everyone says it’s going to get worse, that they’re going to start bombing during the day as well. The hour of bloodshed is near. The war is very close now. Today, a friend of my sister’s came to say good-bye. She’s been called to her post. One of our cousins has gone too. Oh God! All these young lives, is it worth it? It’s all for our country and you have no right to hesitate. “Everything we have, we give to our country!” You cannot ask the price. The hour of combat is coming closer. But will it be the hour of victory? Yes there will be victory, we just have to believe in it, defend our country and drive the enemy out. It is not us who invaded. As soon as we join in the fighting we must not ask the cost! We must have faith and hope. For our country. It is 9.30 in the evening. I am not going to bed. It’s not worth it. According to our sources there will be an attack in the next half hour. I am dressed and ready to go down to the cellar. I will go down but I don’t know whether I will ever come up again. We just don’t know. Anything could happen tonight. It’s possible that within a few hours, this house where I am sitting will no longer exist, that this notebook I am writing in will not be there and it is even possible that I will be gone….Oh dear! What pessimistic thoughts!

From the diary of an Anonymous Boy written on the same day in the Lodz ghetto, where he and his sister had been incarcerated for four years. 28th July 1944 My excitement and terrible impatience grow with every moment - I would like to find myself on the other side of the barrier. I want this so badly I can hardly breathe. Can anyone imagine a condemned man in his awful dungeon-when he can clearly hear the hammering on the other side of the walls of his prison? We can also hear the hammering-every night we have several alarms. 29th July I am in a state of terrible excitement mixed with disbelief and fear. Who of us who are subject to such sufferings could believe it that we should get out, that we should be among those who survive! Oh! If I should be a poet, I should say that my heart is like the stormy ocean, my brains a bursting volcano, my soul like... forgiveness, l am no poet. And the greatest of poets is too poor a fellow in word even to hint, only to allude at what we passed, and are presently passing by. Never has any human being been put into such a state of "the profündis" as we have been. Imagine a Jew of Lodz Ghetto not wholly deprived of imagination when he is being told the few magic words of the 0KW [Supreme Army Command], which run as follows: “Bitter fighting has reached the outskirts of Warsaw”. At last it is not in Asia,

Literature 205

it is not in Africa... but in Europe, in Poland, in Warsaw... If we lived up to this time perhaps shall we live up to the moment of our dreams, to the moment of our deliverance. I am walking along as a lunatic, fevered with impatient expectation, full of hope and fear, I should like to become a few weeks older and still be alive!!

Less than a week later, the remaining inhabitants of the Lodz Ghetto were told they were to be deported. 3rd August When I look on my little sister, my heart is melting. Hasn't the child suffered its [her] part? She, who fought so heroically the last five years? When I look on our cosy little room, tidied up by the young, intelligent, poor being, I am getting saddened by the thought that soon she and I will have to leave our last particle of home! When I come across trifling objects which had a narrow escape all the time- I am sad on the thought on parting with them-for they, the companions of, our misery, became endeared to me. Now we have to leave our home. What will they do with our sick? With our old? With our young? Oh, God in heaven, why didst thou create Germans to destroy humanity? I don't even know if I shall be allowed to be together with my sister! I cannot write more, I am terribly resigned and black spirited!

This is the Anonymous boy’s last entry; he is presumed to have been deported from Lodz to Auschwitz where he and his sister died shortly afterwards. From the diary of Wanda Przybyska, written in Warsaw during the Polish uprising, while Soviet troops halted their advance, waiting across the river. Friday 4th August 1944 Today, I don’t even feel like writing. There is no good news. Our young are holding out, they have even taken up new positions, but they can’t hold out much longer, they are running out of arms. There is no help from the Bolsheviks or from the English. And the Germans are taking action. The beautiful weather returned today. And with it came the bombing and the shooting. What can we do – we are powerless. We have no anti-aircraft guns. And so those swine just make the most of it and fly so low that they can shoot us with a machine gun. We keep hoping to see English or Soviet planes but see nothing but those black German crows circling over our heads. Today, we had to go down into the cellar many times.

3 weeks later… 28th August 1944 In the evening, when I emerged from the shelter, I was greeted by a horrible sight. Everything was in ruins, not a single house was standing, including our own which had gone. The courtyard was completely covered in ash and rubble. It was terrible, an awful sight. The night was calmer, so we went to sleep, in the cellar, of course. For me the night was a real nightmare. We had to sleep on the ground. I felt really dirty and was exhausted after our terrible day. My hand was wounded and hurt badly. I was almost killed out in the yard when I was surprised by a “bellowing bull”. I can hardly describe what I lived through. My coat was on fire. Luckily I had enough presence of mind to throw it off me before I fainted. It’s

206 Bedeutung

amazing that I survived. The next day, the “bulls” left us in peace. We all left the cellar and set to work like ants, whose anthill has been destroyed, and gather together in the same spot to build a new one. We moved the rubble to the side to make a path through to the road and cleared out the air-raid shelter and then began to live again after a day in which we were barely alive. That’s what we are like we fight for our lives right up to the end.

On 4th September as the family attempted to move to a more secure location, Wanda was killed in crossfire. Germans forces drove out Warsaw’s remaining inhabitants and then demolished the city. Wanda’s family returned to bury her in January 1945 when Soviet troops finally took Warsaw from the German army. From the diary of Micheline Singer, written in Paris as she waited for the imminent arrival of Allied troops. Wednesday 16th August 1944 So much has happened. I went to the dentist on foot, as the metro isn’t working and I passed a garage full of German railway workers, completely drunk, very friendly. They had been handing out coal all night, as they are leaving. The dentist’s receptionist, who comes from the suburbs, says the Germans are fleeing from everywhere, in horse drawn carts, on stolen bicycles, taking everything they can which I hope will be taken back off them. In all the hotels, all you see is luggage, cars, lorries. I look insolently at the defeated enemy. We have been waiting for this moment for four years! If we had realised it would take four years, would we have had the courage to live and wait. We are all exhausted. All the Germans from the hotel opposite have left; they looked dead tired. In the evening a neighbour told us the Americans are at Neauphle. Rumours are going round. The Germans are meant to leave Paris by 11 in the morning. Friday 25th August 1944 I just went to see the first three American tanks arrive with French soldiers on them, they are the victors of the “battle for the Champs-Elysees”, covered in red and white gladioli. The Allies let the French, the Leclerc division, enter liberated Paris first! First I had to fight with Mummy to be allowed out, because the fighting isn’t completely over and they are still shooting from the roofs. It’s a complete frenzy; all the little girls, the young boys and girls are on top of the tanks, even dogs, all wearing the tricolour. The French soldiers are covered in lipstick; they look fantastic, baked in the sun. I didn’t kiss the French soldiers because I thought they’d had enough kisses. I hurried over to the American press car and shook hands with a fantastic guy with a little black moustache. A little further on I found one of Nicole’s friends in tears, her father had slapped her while she was kissing a soldier. All of Paris is comforting her, a soldier gives her some chocolate. A little American goes by, chewing gum. Sadly, I have to go home, so Mummy doesn’t get worried. Evening. I felt the most alive today when they burnt the German flags. They took all their champagne with them but left their flags. It looked fantastic from the balcony. The flames went up and all the young girls danced around the fire, singing the Marseilleise. I will never, not even if I live to be 100 forget that. It was as if Hitler was burning there too.

Literature 207

Endnotes.

Contacts Academic & Art Institutions

Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities Malet Street London WC1E 7HX T: +44 (0)20 3073 8363

London School of Economics Houghton Street London WC2A 2AE T: +44 (0)20 7405 7686

British Academy 10 Carlton House Terrace London SW1Y 5AH T: +44 (0)20 7969 5200

The Royal Society 6-9 Carlton House Terrace London SW1Y 5AG T: +44 (0)20 7451 2500

British Library St. Pancras 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB T: +44 (0)20 7412 7676

Royal Society of Arts 8 John Adam Street London WC2N 6EZ T: +44 (0)20 7930 5115

British Library of Political and Economic Science London School of Economics & Political Science 10 Portugal Street London WC2A 2HD T: +44 (0)20 7955 7229 Contemporary Art Society 11-15 Emerald Street London WC1N 3QL T: +44 (0)20 7831 1243 Courtauld Institute Somerset House London WC2R 0RN T: +44 (0)20 7872 0220 Institute of the Contemporary Arts 12 Carlton House Terrace London SW1Y 5AH T: +44 (0)20 7930 0493 Institute of Philosophy University of London Senate House Malet Street London WC1E 7HU T: +44 (0)20 7862 8683

Royal Institute of Philosophy 14 Gordon Square London WC1H OAG T: +44 (0)20 7387 4130 Somerset House South Building Somerset House London WC2R 1LA T: +44 (0)20 7845 4600 Warburg Institute Woburn Square London WC1H 0AB T: +44 (0)20 7862 8949

Contacts Main Galleries & Museums

Annely Juda Fine Art 4th Floor 23 Dering Street London W1S 1AW T: +44 (0)20 7629 7578 The Approach 74 Mortimer Street London W1W 7RZ T: +44 (0)20 7631 4210 Architectural Association 36 Bedford Square London WC1B 3ES T: +44 (0)20 7887 4000 Barbican Art Gallery Silk Street London EC2Y 8DS T: +44 (0)20 7638 4141 British Museum Great Russell Street London WC1B 3DG T: +44 (0)20 7323 8000 Brixton Art Gallery 35 Brixton Station Road London SW9 8RB T: +44 (0)20 7733 6957

The Centre of Attention 67 Clapton Common London E5 9AA T: +44 (0)20 8880 5507 Clapham Art Gallery 40-48 Bromell’s Road London SW4 0BG T: +44 (0)20 7720 0955 Contemporary Applied Arts 2 Percy Street London W1 T: +44 (0)20 7436 2344 County Hall Gallery County Hall London SE1 7PB T: + 44 (0)87 0744 7485 Cubitt 8 Angel Mews London N1 9HH T: +44 (0)20 7278 8226 Design Museum Shad Thames London SE1 2YD T: +44 (0)87 0909 9009

Brunei Gallery, SOAS Thornhaugh Street Russell Square London WC1H 0XG T: +44 (0)20 7637 2388

Diorama Arts 3-7 Euston Centre Regents Place London NW1 3JG T: +44 (0)20 7916 5467

Cafe Gallery Projects Southwark Park London SE16 2UA T: +44 (0)20 7237 1230

Essor Gallery 1 America Street London SE1 0NE T: +44 (0)20 7928 3389

Camden Arts Centre Arkwright Road London NW3 6DG T: +44 (0)20 7472 5500

Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art 39a Canonbury Square London N1 2AN T: +44 (0)207 704 9522

Freud Museum 20 Maresfield Gardens London NW3 5SX T: +44 (0)20 7435 2002 Frith Street Gallery 17-18 Golden Square London W1F 9JJ T: +44 (0)20 7494 1550 Gagosian Gallery 6-24 Britannia Street London WC1X 9JD T: +44 (0)20 7841 9960 Gasworks 155 Vauxhall Street London SE11 5RH T: +44 (0)20 7587 5202 Guildhall Art Gallery & Roman London’s Amphitheatre Guildhall Yard London EC2V 5AE T: +44 (0)20 7332 3700 Haunch of Venison 6 Haunch of Venison Yard London W1K 5ES T: +44 (0)20 7495 5050 James Hyman Gallery 5 Savile Row London W1S 3PD T: +44 (0)20 7494 3857 John Martin Gallery 38 Albemarle Street London W1S 4JG T: +44 (0)20 7499 1314 Lisson Gallery 52-54 Bell Street London NW1 5DA T: + 44(0)20 7724 2739

Contacts Main Galleries & Museums

Mall Galleries 17 Carlton House Terrace London SW1Y 5BD T: +44 (0)20 7930 6844

The October Gallery 24 Old Gloucester Street London WC1N 3AL T: + 44 (0)20 7242 7367

Tate Britain Millbank London SW1P 4RG T: +44 (0)20 7887 8888

Man & Eve Gallery 8A Courtneney Street London SE11 5PH T: +44 (0) 20 75871878

The Orangery Gallery Holland Park London W8 6LU T: +44 (0)20 7602 3316

Marlborough Fine Art 6 Albemarle Street London W1S 4BY T: +44 (0)20 7629 5161

Photofusion 17a Electric Lane London SW9 8LA T: +44 (0)20 7738 5774

Tate Modern Bankside London SE1 9TG T: +44 (0)20 7887 8888

Michael Hoppen Gallery 3 Jubilee Place London SW3 3TD T: +44 (0)20 7352 3649

The Photographers’ Gallery 5 & 8 Great Newport Street London WC2H 7HY T: +44 (0)20 7831 1772

Nancy Victor Basement 36 Charlotte Street London W1T 2NJ T: +44 (0)20 7813 0373 National Gallery Trafalgar Square London WC2N 5DN T: +44 (0)20 7747 2885 National Maritime Museum Greenwich London SE10 9NF T: +44 (0)20 8858 4422

RIBA Architecture Gallery 66, Portland Place London W1B 1AD T: +44 (0)20 7580 5533 Riflemaker 79 Beak Street London W1F 9SU T: +44 (0)20 7439 0000 Serpentine Gallery Kensington Gardens London W2 3XA T: +44 (0)20 7402 6075

Thomas Dane Gallery 11 Duke Street St James’s London SW1Y 6BN T: +44 (0)20 7925 2505 Victoria and Albert Museum Cromwell Road London SW7 2RL T: +44 (0)20 7942 2000 Waddington Galleries 11 Cork Street London W1S 3LT T: +44 (0)20 7851 2200 The Wallace Collection Hertford House Manchester Square London W1U 3BN T: +44 (0)20 7563 9500

National Portrait Gallery St Martin’s Place London WC2H 0HE T: +44 (0)20 7312 2463

Southbank Centre Belvedere Road London SE1 8XX T: +44 (0)87 1663 2501

Whitechapel Angel Alley Entrance 80-82 Whitechapel High St London E1 7QX T: +44 (0)20 7522 7888

Natural History Museum Cromwell Road London SW7 5BD T: +44 (0)20 7942 5000

South London Gallery 65 Peckham Road London SE5 8UH T: +44 (0)20 7703 6120

White Cube 48 Hoxton Square London N1 6PB T: +44 (0)20 7930 5373

Submissions We welcome submissions for forthcoming issues from anyone wishing to contribute. If you are thinking of sending us material for publication, please read below to get an idea of what we will consider. Rules are not made to be broken. • We are mostly, if not exclusively, interested in material that is germane to the theme of a forthcoming issue. • The texts that appear in the magazine are rarely less than 3000 words and they go up to 10000, excluding foot/endnotes, bibliography etc. This means that we are looking for articles that display some degree of thoroughness. • Stylistically, we do not fancy name-dropping and flamboyance. We are delighted to read imaginative texts, even playful ones, and will definitely consider them fit for publication, as long as they are not pontifical and vain. • We will consider submissions from a wide range of disciplines: philosophy, politics, art/culture, journalism, film, science, literature. Please, however, refrain from using jargon that would make your text accessible only to a very specialised readership. • If you are an artist considering a collaboration, please bear in mind the following: we are inclined to show the work, rather than publish about it. This means that we are keen on providing the artist with an agreed number of pages that can be treated as an exhibition space. • At this point we don’t publish poetry. We wouldnt be able to tell good from bad. • We will publish texts that have been published elsewhere, provided that their significance merits re-publication. You must, obviously, hold the copyright. You can also consider translating texts that appear in a different language (subject to arrangement with us). • This should go without saying, but experience has taught us that it doesn’t: please send us finished works, not the title of something you are considering writing or an idea that could develop to an article. And vice-versa: don’t send us your 50000-words dissertation and expect us to edit it. • Feel free to include images with your text. • Please include all your contact details. We also recommend an abstract of no more than 500 words on the first page of your submission. • Unfortunately, we are presently not in the favourable position to pay for submissions.

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I can’t go on, you must go on, I’ll go on, you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it’s done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on. Samuel Beckett The Unnamable