SEMIOTDff (E) INTERVENTION SERIES

O 2010 Semiotext(e) and Jean BaudrillardThis translation @ 2010 by Semiotext(e)

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Thanks to Marine Baudrilland, Marc l,owenthal andJohn Eben.

Inside cover photograph: Jean BaudrillardDesign: Hedi El Kholti

ISBN: 978- 1 -5 8435-092-7Distributed byThe MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.and london, EnglandPrinted in the United States ofAmerica

Baudrillard

Agony of Power

by Sylvre Lotringer

:franslated by Ames Hodges

semiotext{e)interventionseries tr 6

by Sylvre LotringerDomination to Hegemony

;fhe White Terror of World Order,Where Good Growsfire Roots of Evil

7

33

59

79

109

AND SERVITUDE

tfo book Bathers previously unpublished textsrdren in 2005, two years before the author's death.km. Bauddllard read them at various conferencesrurndtheworld, in Rio deJaneiro, Montreal, Newb*, Quito, etc. By then, he had become an itin-crent philosopher-he never \ilas much of a "home"1ilompher anyway. I joined him in Montreal in lateOctober 2005, where he delivered the first textincluded here, "From Domination to Hegerhony."fle was taking a crack at the bewildering situationorrrently facing us as we exit the system of "domina-tion" (based on slavery obedience, alienation) andenter a more expansive world of "hegemony," invich everyone becomes both hostage and accom-plice of the global power. It was a very powerful text,and I offered to publish it right away in English.Baudrillard was hoping to turn all the texts he waswriting at the time into a new book, so I held off.

A few months later he was diagnosed with crlncerand never regained enough strength to follow up on

this project. I am publishing these texts, slightlyedited to avoid duplication, into a book in order tofulfiIl, at least partially, his wishes'l I simply addedan interview that he gave that same year toChronic'art, a French cultural magazine, which hereviewed personally. Baudrillard wastit one to make

a final ,,"..rrr.rr,-he didn't take himself thatseriously-but this book could certainly be read ashis inteilectual testament. Only a free mind couldhave wrifien it. Like Nietzsche, Baudrillard neverwas afraid of shaking everything that was alreadycrumbling down, whatever the outcome'

Leavin-g Montreal, \ile carne back to New Yorkwhere *e had scheduled a public dialogue betweenourselves at the New School for Social Research inearly November. It took place in front of a packed

"udi.t.., and hundreds more people lined up good-

humoredly in the street. It was Baudrillard's last tripto the United States, and it turned into a festival'Everyone wanted to check for themselves whetherBiri[ard was for real or a simulacrum of himself'And here he was at the center of the huge emPtystage-a stoclry, soft-spoken bespectacled little manwi a hrge Native-American face, mumbling some

1. Two other texts \i/ere published separately as Carniual and Annibal"

trans. Chris Tirrner, hndon, Seagull Bools, 2010'

I / Th+ Agr')n'r' of Pt.:wer

Esglish with a German-sounding accent. I am notsr anyone understood everything that was said,but the audience was ecstatic. It was philosophy bycontact. This is the way theory was being accomo-dated in an age of media spectacle. But why shouldmry be spared the general decomposition of allulues, which is turning culture, politics, nor romention life itsel[ into a carnival? Even Slavoj Ziiekdevishly said ofAlain Badiou, playrng each other up,nlur he was "Plato walking among us." fl'hy not Maohfusel8 As Baudrillard wrote: "History that repeatsavlfnmr5 to farce. But a farce that repeats itself endsry making a history." The event was history.

\ry early on, Baudrillard mapped out most of theoncepts that he would work on for decades to.n'*e. As he recognized it himsele a philosophermey only have one idea in his life, and be lucky thathE has one, but he could unfold it in such a wayr -r ro one would recognize it whenever they

-*ed by it again. Actually, Baudrillard had twonellr ideas: the first one, critical, was that realitytnc disappeared and was replaced by simulacra;-'c second one, more agonistic, was to turn this.lE.ppearance into a symbolic challenge.

The agonistic challenge was what he reallycuod out, but simulation and simulacra is whatpople remembered him for most, often taking it,..tonoously, as an advocation on his part. It was in

irtrodilctlor: Doilin.lilor: lrrril SgrvitL.rrie r g

fact a jubilant diagnosis of our civilization.Baudrillard could never quite believe his eyes whenfaced with what we keep doing to ourselves in thename o-whatever. Like Antonin Artaud,Baudrillard realized from the onset that our culturewas getting divorced from life. By the time he waswriting, there was not much life left to be divorcedfrom. Baudrillard was hailed as the inventor of"post-modernism," a concept he rejected. The sameconfusion surrounded Michel Foucault, who wascast as the stern advocate of control, or Paul Viriliocast as the prophet of speed. The publication ofSimulations gave Baudrillard instant prominence inthe New York art world. It got him pigeonholed asthe denier of reaiity, and he was adulated or hatedfor it. He was in fact already working on otherconcepts-seduction, fatality, ecstasy-by the timesimulation became the rage. "Simulation" neverwas Baudrillardt signature concept, the way the"sociery of the spectacle" was for Guy Debord,although the two notions remain closely related'Simulation is spectacle without an agency. Theconcept got out of hand, the way the OedipusComplex did for Freud, who only wrote eight pagesall in all about it. The two parts that make upSimulations were only put together in the book Ipublished in English in the Foreign Agents series ini983. In French, they belong to different books."simulation" was first mentioned in Tbe Consumer

10./ Tirs A.Jarlv'ai Por^,i-'r

Society-published in 1970, a couple of years afterDebordt Society ofthe Spectacle. Fittingly, Baudrillardmanaged to turn Ferdinand de Saussuret discoveryof linguistic ualue (signs as pure differences) into a*structural

revolution." It was a clinical assessmentof a society that was losing all its moorings.Identifying the code independently of any outsidereference allowed him to read the sign on the wall-*re floatation of value escaping into boundless spec-ulation. Politics after that could never be the same.

The major turn in Baudrillard's thinking, para-doxically, happened in America. An invitation byMarxist Fredric Jameson to teach for a fewmonths in San Diego in 1975, together with Jean-Frangois Lyotard, Michel de Certeau, Louis Marinand Edgar Morin, turned out to be decisive. Thets/o camps didnt always see eye to eye, and therewere occasional tensions and mutual exclusions,which I happened to wirness at the time, but itcertainly was a learning process on both sides, andhad lasting repercussions. Baudrillard took a hugesrep forward when he discovered the "Siliconl'ril.y'' phenomenon, the home-based computerutopia, which he hailed as the "cybernedc disinre-gration of the 'rerriary merropolis."'2 145) Unti

Gmr london, Sage Publications , 1993, p.45. All the page nmbes intir inrodufiion refer to this book.

then, he had seen the sphere of consumption as amere appendage of the sphere of production, the\May superstructures sat on infrastructures inMarxist theory. Registering the California effect,Baudrillard realized that production was movinginto consumption. His analysis of the consumersociety hadnt been a limited case study; it appliedeuerywhere. The consumer Process couldnt bestopped, it would engulf everything. Soon, theentire world would be "consumed" by theexchangeabiliry of capital. "Everything withinproduction and the economy becomes com-mutable, reversible and exchangeable according tothe same indeterminate specularity as we find inpolitics, fashion or the media." [16] Capitai nolonger \eas a process of production; productionitself was dissolving into the code. [18] He alsounderstood that there was no more gaP left, noinsider's distance that would still allow for a cri-tique of society. Any counter-discourse filteringinto the code would immediately be "disconnectedfrom its own ends, disintegrated and absorbed"like everything else. [2]

Before leaving San Diego, Baurillard feverishlycompleted his rnagnum opus, Syrrubolic Exchangearud Death,which he published the followingyea,a thick and rambling book that served as a scaf-folding for everything that he would try out in the

12 i Ir- Agor:y ci Pr:o'ver

!t!s to come. 7hile Deleuze and Guattari main-rdned that sociery keeps leaking from all sides andlrcapital never stops investing and disinvesting:nimries with its flows, Baudrillardt own versiondcepital, the structural revolution of value, wasrt6hg but fluid. On the contrary, it was ahxnogenizing principle based on repetition,hirging together differences from various sourcesue larger and larger scale. By an "extraordinarydmridence," Baudrillard recalled, he had turnedukeud just at the moment when he realized that- e system of production was moving to theqlherc of reproduction. It dawned on him that thetutire political economy was governed by theilar} drive. [148] In its most "terroristic structural5rm," the law of value was a "compulsive repro-&crion of the code." It was death on the march,end'the destiny of our culture." [152]

The death drive keeps unbinding energy andrarrning it to a prior, inorganic state. Freud treatedft as a biological metaphor, but also as a myth,'oagnificent in its indefiniteness." Using Freudagainst Freud, Baudrillard celebrated it as anamazing breakthrough, a major anthropologicaldiscovery. This sent him back, via Mauss andBaaille, to ancient cults and primitive formations.khough he would hardly refer to it by name, thedeath drive became the keystone of his entirework. The exaltation that he felt then, seeing

introduation: }:in niiiion anri Seivltui]e r' 13

everything suddenly coming together' reverberatesthrough iy*botl, Exchange and Death' especiallyin the"preiace, which takes on a visionary qualiry:"Ever).nvhere, in every domain, a single form pre-dominates: reversibility, cyclical reversal andannulment put an end to the linearity of time'language, ..orro*i. exchange, accumulation andpo.r."H.nce the reversibility of the gift in thecounter-gift, the reversibiliry of exchange.in thesacrifice,lhe reversibiliry of time in the cycle' ' ' Inevery domain it assumes the form of extermina-tion and death, for it is the form of the symbolicitself." [2] Reversibiliry is the form death takes in

" ,y*ioii. exchange. And Baudrillard warned

D.l.,rr. and Guattari that "all the freed energieswill one day return to it" ' For the system is themasrer: like God it can bind or unbind energies;what it is incapable of (and what it can no longeravoid) is reversibiliry." [5)

At the time Baudrillard was witnessing the twi-Iight of labor culture in the deserts of California'ttre Operaist movement in kaly was experimentingwith ihe same idea, but on a much larger scale'voluntarily renouncing steady employment andrelying instead on clltctive intelligence andt..rologi.al advances' Italian autonomists sawthemr.ll Js as a ne\M breed of communists' and yetthey were open-ended enough to look to America

14 1 nti AitolY 'li Ftiwer

r itt.,syslive forms of labor and freer trade-snionism along the line of the Tobblies (thetrnrcraational \Torkers of the 7orld) who hado"e?dzed immigrant workers in the 1920s. FlixGsamari publicly espoused their cause in France,Toni Negri conceived it in Italy, and JeanBar*lrillard dreamed it in America. They all hadEaed the same conclusions: the Fordist sysrem,rirh communist parties and labor bureaucracyIoc*ed together, was blocking any change. It had tohc replaced by "zero work" and "cottage industries."

Compared to the French "Glorious Three,"1830, 1848 and the 1871 Paris Commune, May"68 was a failed revolution, but it succeeded ino&er ways. It demonstrated that traditional class*ruggle no longer was a viable political alternative.Tbe "revolutionaries" remained on the sideline,end the rebels were already engaged in repro-duction. Italian autonomists saw the comingFocdordist paradigm as radical utopia, it was the'ommunism of capital."3 Baudrillard wasnt sosre- Looking at it as part of the "revolution ofmlue,' he realized that Postfordism and the newra-*rnologies of labor could well be another stepowards an "integral realiry" that no one would be

3- olo Virno, Grammar of the Muhitud.e , trans. Isabella Bertoletti,rmes Cscaito, and Andrea Casson, Los Angeles, Semiotext(e),lID3, p. 110.

iloil rc iion : L)r.;rnlr:;-:liitir arjc $i]i\.,i ttidi 1' 1 5

able to oppose, short of capitalism itself' Theintellectual split became unavoidable. In the 1980s,the "winter years," Baudrillardt extrapolationswere rejected by his peers as "weak thought"'

The consequences of the paradigmatic changeindeed were huge, and they could be read indifferent ways. Immaterializing labor allowed theform of capital to Penetrate the entire sociery' Itinvested workers both at home and in the socialspace "as one might 'invest' a to\Mn' totally occu-pying it and controlling all access'" [19]' Noio.rgt brutally bought and sold on the market-place, labo. Power became another commodity'Labor and nonlabor time (exchange value anduse value) became harder to differentiate, asBaudrillard had anticipated, and the extraction ofsurplus-value problematic. The Passage from thegolden age of production to the social factory wasIxciting; for some, like Toni Negri and PaoloVirno,lt promised the deployment of a "generalintelligence" open to change and innovation'Looking at it the other way, it was nonstop workand general stupidity. The structure of absorptionb... total. Pulverized "into every pore ofsociety," labor becam e a wd! of W. ln 1976, theyear Baudrillard published Symbolic Exchange,Foucault introduced the concept of "bio-power"in his lectures at the College de France' Their con-frontation in Forget Foucault, one year later, could

.16 / Ttre gony r:i ['owi,'r

be read again in that light. It may well have beene misssd encounter.

Like Foucault, Baudrillard had been deeplyfected by the work of Antonin Artaud andGeorges Bataille, "high modernisrs" who intro-rft'ced them both to Nietzsche, but their influenceon Baudrillard remained long-lasting. Both-trtaud's "theater of cruelty" and Bataille's "sacri-t o

were attempts ro recreate a symbolic bond ine world increasingly estranged from it. The con-oqlt of "cruelry" inspired by Nietzsche, involvederict rules that had to be applied with an implaca-te rigor. The display of gruesome tortures anddismemberments in Foucaulr's Discipline andMish,published the same year, were cruel in thatrey: the ritual of power was meant to inflict onrhe regicidet body pains that would be, down to&e last detail, commensurate to rhe ourrage.

In the classical-legal-conception of sover-Qnty, the monarch isnt just considered superiorfovereign') to his miserable subjects in relativetFlns- Ruling by divine right, his superiority is{aolute and transcends vulgar human existence.fr&ing life or letting liue are the sovereignt funda--r'rtel attributes. But only when he actually kills-eren

tyrannically, unjusdy-does the sovereignfrfty exen his symbolic rights over life. Foucault.ugested that the punishment was all the more

ll tiIOdliaiion: Dorrjin/,ili(iir ;ir'lri Snril ri,r ./ 1 7

ruthless in that it was meant to offset the discon-tinuous hold of power over sociery' "The meshes ofthe net *.r. .oo big," and eluded his grasp'a Thissfrategic vision of domination went a long way inaccorinting for the technological mutadon of powerin the \7est at the dawn of the industrial revolution'\While outwardly maintaining the image of sover-eignty, a new type of disciplinary control sankdeeper into the social body, down to- its most,.rr.ro.r, elements. \Vhat disappeared in the processwas srrmbolic exchange. Foucaultt inversion of thesFstem of power from the top down, from the sover-

igrr.y of death to the discipline of life, follows thesa.togi.. The new sFstem of powerwhich replacedthe old in the nineteenth century had its ownclaims: the right to tahelife and bt ile' Life replaceddeath as a means of controlling society at large'

Hegelt master/slave dialectics was based on theslave's fear of death. Giving it a perverse tvvist'Bataille hypothesized that there was not just one'but two seParate forms of mastery' The first'relying on classical "domination," is geared to Pro-d.r.. ob.di.nt subjects. The master rules becausethe slave is afraid of death, and he is not' But werethe master to actually die, Bataille objected' hewould lose his mastery. The master was no different

4. Michel Foucault,'Irs mailles du pouvoir" (1976) in Dit * crix'Y'Paris, Gallimard, 1994, p. 190-

1B ,' Tre Agolrv r,' Power

&'-r the slave, and dialectics was a con-game. Bothruled by the fear. Bataille wenr on to hypoth-another form of sovereignty that would be

from domination. The real sovereign is*, h the Nietzschean sense. He doesnt deriveh power from his subjects, but from his own{-l,. He onlywaits it to come, immune from anyfmger save the one who will murder him. It wasL at way that Bataille managed to reestablish a'rymbolic exchange where there was none.

In 1933, Bataille extended this sacrificialFnomy to contemporary labor through his reading

hruuicted economy'' of capital (utility and use value)ffi the Northwestern American-Indian model of&c'podatch," a symbolic exchange in which goods*ritually destroyed and rivalry exacerbated to thepint of terminal violence. For Bataille, only uselessrqmditure was able ro counter the deadening effectdcapitalt exchangeabiliry. The most lucid man, heilrure, will understand nothing if "it does not occurb him that a human society can have, just as hedocs, an interest in considerable losses, in catastro-uf,es that, while conforming to well-defined needs,lmoke tumultuous depressions, crises of dread,il{ in the final analysis, a certain orgiastic state."5A Canges Bataille, in Visions of Exces, tr. Allan Stoekl, Minneapolis,fErtsfu of Minnesota Pras, 1985, p. 117.

irlolir,ictlclr: Doirir]aij:lan and Sci\Jillida ,/ 19

Bataille looked upon capital as enslaving workers

as being the same thing as the sovereign imposingobedience on his subjects' Just because the sover-eign chose to lethissubiects tive didnt mean.he letth-em free. They remained subjected to him inwhatever function they carried out' \Whether aprisoner of war, whose life was spared; a slaveserving in sumptuary domesticiry; an emancipated,lrrr.; l, a serf in the fields, none of their lives weretheir own. They didnt have to die in order to bedead; their death was dffired, kept in suspension'until the sovereign decided otherwise'

And the ,"*. holdt true for the factory worker'Labor, Bataille maintained, was a unilateral gift ofcapital to the workers and was rnant "to condemn

them to a hideous degradation"' Contrary to whatMarx believed, the process of production wasnt set

up to extract frorn them a surplus-value-' its realp.rrpor. was to subject them to a sacrifice' And'g".itt. dismissed ile American "subterfuge" ofcomPensating workers for the debasement that hadb..n i*por. on th.-. Nothing could modify thefundamental division between noble and ignoblemen. "The cruel game of social life does not varyamong the different civilized countries, where theinsulti'ng splendor of the rich loses and degrades the

human nature of the lower class'"6

6. Georges Bataille, Ibid' P. 126.

2a i \e Agonli cf Powe;r

nd "the scenario has never changed,"lmdrillard concurred, since labor polver has beentctituted on death. Having converred his deathhawage, the worker could only free himself byEing his own death on the line.

Vhether the industrialists would crush their.;*es, or the workers slaughter their masters (it,hd been the dilemma in 1933 Germany) didnt'-lr.tcr that much to him as long as a sacrificialmnomy took over from political economy..ilhoever worl

enclosure-asylums, prisons, factories, schools-would eventually be reabsorbed by the system anddisplayed as phantom references. Liberating mad-ness, or sexualiry would simply empty them outof their subversive Potential. In the late 1970s,Foucault and Guattari did their utmost to openthe asylums, and succeeded all too well-mentalpatients were simply dumped into the streets' The,"..r. h"pp..ted to sex, which became an industry'The only site left untouched was death. Or ratherit was disappeared in broad daylight in order toleave room for the new consumer way of life'Instead of madness, the limit bywhich contemPo-rary sociery defines itself became death' "Perhapsdeath and death alone," Baudrillard concluded,"belongs to a higher order than the code"' [4] Hedidnt mean death as a biological fact, but thereuersi bility of death.

Etienne de la Botie, a young Renaissancephilosopher and close friend of Michel deMontaigne, wrote a slim pamphlet that has notceased to fascinate generations of thinkers,Baudrillard included. The argument of La Botie'sDiscourse ofVoluntary Seraitade, 1548, was simple,but powerful. How did it happen that "so manymen, so many villages, so many cities, so manynations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrantwho has no other power than the Power they give

22 i Ii u: ArlLll:'; ci Pl,wcr

hfrt"...."7 '7hat could have "denatured" men rom an extent that, born to live free, they wouldLzn'e lost "the remembrance of their originalH.g, and the desire to regain it"? His answer wasmrk people lose their freedom through their ownhlindness. The desire ro serve the tyrant is some-ting that they themselves want. Had La Botielnown about native societies discovered at the*irne in the New 7orld (and maybe he did) itoertainly would have vindicated his argumenrabout the denaturation of humaniry. It was proofcnough that voluntary servitude wasnt innate, butprompted from the outside.

Something must have happened then, LaBoetie suggested, a "misfortune" lmalencontrefnh"t made people willing, even eager, ro embraceeir tyrant. Suddenly domination caught on,effecdng everyone, eventually wearing the face ofe sovereign or the form of the State. As long asrime was circular, and society undivided, themrchanism of servitude was kept in abeyance.The accident, or misforrune, knocked all this&wn. It was the beginning of History. "Alldfuided societies are slave socie ties"8 Pierre

-- i=rne de l,a Botie, Discource on Volunary Seruiat*, trans. HarryX*, New York, Columbia University Press, 1942, p. 7.S- Eere Clastres, The Archeobgy of Vi0lrn6 tr. Jeanine Herman, los-\des, Semiotext(e),2010, p. 174.

riiioctioiiorl: Dolliilelliiii] arc liervi'rud{] ,/ 23

Clastres, a controversial political anthropologist'concluded in The Archeologlt of Violence, "becausethis love of the sub.iects for the master equallydenatures the relations between subjects"'e Thepeoplet love for their own subjection became thewell-hidden secret of domination. Every relationof power is oppressive, regardless of who, cruel orbenevolent, comes to assume it.

'l,n Tristes Topiques, Claude Lvi-strauss heldon to the idea of "innocent savages" corrupted by\lestern civilization' It didnt Prevent good nativesfrom practicing tortures and scarifications witheven more gusto and expertise than the sovereign'shenchmen when they tore the regicide's flesh fromhis breast, or burnt it with wax and sulfur' But itwasn't for the benefit of one, distinct from the restof the tribe. To the contrary: the ghastly ritual wasmeant to inscribe on native bodies the tribal lawthat everybody, without excePtion, would have toobey. The collective memory created through vio-lence and death, wasn't buried deep inside them'but indelibly displayed on their skin for everyoneto see. It certainly required extreme codificationson the part of Indian tribes to resist change andremain .".*pa from domination. Far from beingclose to nature, they subjected themselves to fero-cious markings whose ultimate outcome, Clastres

9. Ibid, p. t87.

24 I 7r,v: Ag+rrY oi i)irirric;;'

m:intained, was to prevent the emergence in theirmidst of this cold monster, the State. -Whether so-sJkd primitive cultures had been exposed to savagempires beforehand, or preempred their recurrenceercugh their own practices and institutions,Enains an open debate, but they deliberatelydcrised a number of strict mechanisms to that{ffect. To keep their numbers down, they engagedb ceaseless wars against neighboring tribes, andLtpt civil, religious and war powers separare.himitive socieries ignored slavery and preservedu rell their ancestral homeostasis by staging ritualdasrrtrctions of accumulated wealth. This is what*[mdatcli'

ultimately is about: eradicating the evil,&nre" making sure that whoever wins the ruthless'Tallsags would end up with nothing, and even&,-r rhan nothing: losing their lives. Survivorsmquired more prestige, bur were too destitute touElDresent a serious threat.

The power attributed to chiefs in anthropologicalilharrrnrrs, from Marcel Mauss to Lvi-Strauss, hasE.-, wildly overesrimared. In his celebrated*Sriting Lesson,"lo Lvi-Strauss recounts that hed-gfld out the tribal chief by his superior intelli-6ece and his eagerness to acquire power from theFcsdia' technology used by the anthropologist to

'flm! ,S aper of Claude lvi-Strauss, Tisxs TmpiEres, New York:

iiririjLioltoir: lornl j,iiii-ri. anli :jorillrd0 ./ 25

consign his observations. There couldnt have been,of course, a greater betrayal in a society withoutwriting and without history where traditions werepassed on orally from generation to generation,than to introduce writing, however rudimentaryand apeJike. But someone, an insider, had to dis-sociate himself from his congeners and take on theblame for the stranger who came from the outsideto break the secrets of the tribe. Lvi-Strauss auto-matically assumed that the chief, because a "chief"was different form the others, and willing toacquire from the foreigner a power that he wouldhave been unable to devise on his own from within.Such was the price to pay for enlightenment, andLvi-Strauss was eager to assume the \White Mantguilt for it, as long as the savage retained theirassumed naturalness. \What sealed this litde mentaldrama, and got the story straight, was the passingmention that the chief, uldmately, was decommis-sioned and expelled by his kin.

Contrary to the sovereign, Indian chiefs areremarkable for their complete lack of authoritF.The only power they own resides in the palabra,in their capacity to maintain by their speeches anequilibrium within the group. They recapitulateout loud, like a mantra, the tribet genealogy andtradition, while no one, ostensibly, is payingattention. As Clastres says, he doesnt have theright, but the duty to talk. Chiefs have no Power

26 i Tite AiJory ol Power

ult hfe, let alone appropriate some of thewealth. Actually, they have to divest them-&om everything they own, and tolerate a

plunder" from the other members.ronder the position of a chief is not exactly

They remain dependent on everyoneand are granted several women, not as a privi-but because they arent allowed to hunt for

Generosiry is not only a chieft duty,'an involuntary servitude."

v Ddeuze and Guattari reproached Clastres (whom

societies could exist in autarchy outside oflfmry. But Clastres did morq he suggested that l,a.Ioaie himself had pulled off a similar feat. Theqrcion that his Discoarse raises, he said, is sofutr ty free" and independent of any teritoriality4*i1on still be received today in the same way. Lattaiehad a unique opportunity to "step out of his-n5r" because the monarchy was just beginning toercrye among rival feudal lords and divide societyCoog a vertical axis, pitting against each otherrurreigns and subjects, masrers and slaves. Ind, specialists agree that the Discourse was a directrpons to a massive peasant uprising against taxesL Gryenne, the first of its kind, that was ruthlesslyrm$d by the monarcht soldiers in 1548.

La Boetiet purpose wasnt to encourage subjectsorebel, but to remind them that any domination

iilfo.luo'iio:: lLilrlrtalioit ainc llorvtl.iclr) // 27

is illegitimate: "From all these indignities, such asthe very beasts of the field would not endure, youcan deliver yourselves if you try, not by takingaction, but merely by willing to be free' Resolve toserve no more, and you are at once freed... sup-port him no longer; then you will behold him,like a great Colossus whose pedestal has beenpulled away, fall of his own weight and break inpieces." La Boetie showed no resPect for thesovereign's right, divine or not, let alone for thosewho subjected themselves willingly to it. Therewas something that nothing could subdue, evenunder the most vicious tortures: the power thatdeath affords. Montaigne, an exile like him inhis own time, wrote: "Premeditation of death ispremeditation of freedom'.. Acknowledgingdeath frees us from every subjection and con-straint." Only death resists domination.

Voluntary servitude is a paradoxical statementbecause servitude is not experienced passively, butactively-after all, it is willed. And anything thatis willed could be unwilled. People rather desiretheir own oppression. Obviously, they must getsomething in return: identiry privilege, security,even pleasure, however Perverse. Jean-FrangoisLyotard once asserted, scandalously, in LibidinalEconomy, that factory workers enjoyed their lot.They were p roles, and proud to be. Didnt the pro-letariat, after Marx, become a value? They were

28 i Tir: Aton..; of Po',,Yex

ones who knew what "rough reality'' was.intellectuals, Jean-Paul Sartre included,

dply illegitimate, even dwarfed by them,rore their blue overalls in demonstrations to

some of their power. PhilosopherV'eil couldnt care less about power, she

ranted to be crucified. She joined the assem-line to experience what being a slave was likeook herself for one, reinventing God in order

sal her own fate. Factory workers were theof humankind-as if slavery could bring

ing else than more slavery. In the end itthe dictatorship of the proletariat thatout a classless sociery but capitalism-on

own terms, of course, and for its own benefit.Yoluntary servitude wasnt something that one

acknowledge, consciously or not; it wasturned inside out, everyone forever circling

mrnd each other. \What was unforgivable aboutIIev'68 rebels or about the Autonomia move-: rt at its peak in 1977 is that they did notwantpuke power. Franco Piperno, one of their leaders,efuited to me later on: "'7'e didnt know whatrc would have done with it." As Baudrillardkites in The Agony of Powen "Power itself must be,trolished-and not solely because of a refusal to bednminated, which is at the heart of all traditionalrrugles-but also, just as violently, in the refusalD dominate."

lrriiL-riit.;oilorir Domirratron and Serviiudar / 29

Agony of Power

,GROM DOMINATION TO HEGEMONY

order to grasp how globalization and globalworks, we should distinguish carefully

domination and hegemony. One couldthat hegemony is the ultimate stage of domi-

and its terminal phase. Domination isrized by the master/slave relation, which

sdll a dual relation with potential alienation, aionship of force and conflicts. It has a violentrry of oppression and liberation. There aredominators and the dominated-it remains a

relationship. Everything changes withemancipation of the slave and the internal-

of the master by the emancipated slave.begins here in the disappearance ofthe

personal, agonistic domination for the sakereality-the reality of networks, of the

and total exchange where there are nodominators or dominated.

Indeed, it could be said that hegemony bringsdomination to an end. 7e, emancipated workers,internalize the Global Order and its operationdsetup of which we are the hostages far more thanthe slaves. Consensus, be it voluntary or involun-tary, replaces traditional servitude, which stillbelongs to the symbolic register of domination.

"HEGEMoN" means the one who commands,orders, Ieads and governs (and not the one whodominates and exploits). This brings us back tothe literal meaning of the word "rybernetic"(Kubernetik, the art of governing). Contrary todomination, a hegemony of world power is nolonger a dual, personal or real form of dominadon,but the domination of networks, of calculationand integral exchange.

Domination can be overthro'\Mn from the out-side. Hegemony can only be inverted or reversedfrom the inside. Two different, almost contraryparadigms: the paradigm of revolution, transgres-sion, subversion (domination) and the paradigmof inversion, reversion, autoJiquidation (hege-mony). They are almost exclusive of each other,because the mechanisms of revolution, of anti-domination, as history demonstrated, can becomethe impetus or the vector for hegemony. \7e couldcompare hegemony to the brain, which is itsbiological equivalent. Like the brain, which subor-dinates every other function, the central comPuter

34 1 I\e AlJOrry oi Powr

the hegemonic hold of a global polvercan therefore serve as an image of our present

other feature distinguishes hegemony fromand simple domination is the coming of a

ntal event: simulacra and simulation.ony works through general masquerade,

rclies on the excessive use of every sign andiry the way it mocks its own values, and

the rest of the world by its cynicismivalization'). Classical, historical domination

a system of positive values, displaying asas defending these values. Contemporary

on the other hand, relies on a symbolicion of every possible value. The termsrum," "simulation" and "virtual" summa-

this liquidation, in which every signification isin its own sign, and the profusion of

parodies a by now unobtainable reality. Thistotal masquerade in which domination itself

Power is only the parody of the signs ofjust as war is only the parody of signs of

nrt, including technology. Masquerade of war,of power. '(/'e can therefore speak of

tchegemony of masquerade, and the masqueraded@emony. All meaning is abolished in its own:dEn and the profusion of signs parodies a now

{i*coverable reality.

ffilt'r,,'

From Dcminalioir io Hefjen:r.;rr); 1 35

ll

l

Domination and hegemony are separated bythe liquidation of realiry the super fast irruption, oflate, of a global principle of simulation, a globalhold by the virtual. Globalization is the hegemonyof a global power and can only occur in the frame-work of the virtual and the networks-with thehomogeneity that comes from signs emptied oftheir substance.

The entire Testern masquerade relies on thecannibalization of realiry by signs, or of a cultureby itself. I use "cannibalize" here in the derivativesense of cannibalizirtg a car, using it as spareparts. Cannibalizing a culture, as we do it today,means tinkering with its values like spare partsinasmuch as the entire system is out of order. Thisdistinction between domination and hegemony iscrucial. It determines the forms of resistanceappropriate for each and the various ways inwhich the present situation could evolve. Onedoesnt respond to hegemony and domination inthe same way; the strategies should not be confused'

In the face of this hegemony, the work of the nega-tive, the work of critical thought, of the relationshipofforces against oppression, or ofradical subjec-tivity against alienation, all this has (virtually)become obsolete. It has become obvious that, thanksto the twists and turns of cynical reason, or theruses of history, this new hegemonic configuration

36 r/ l1"re Ag;l;r:,,,r] Pcwtt-

is no longer the hegemony of capital)sorbed the negative, negativity as a way of

the initiative. Caught in avast Stockholm, the alienated, the oppressed, and theare siding with the system that holds

hostage. They are now "annexed," in thesense, prisoners of the "nexus," of the net-connected for better or worse.

Power has ransacked all of the strategies ofion: parody, irony, and self-mockery-

rng the Left with only a phantom of the truth.mous slogan for the Banque Nationale de

i (BNP) in the 1970s comes to mind: "Yourinterests me!" This statement encapsulates

ignominy of capital far better than any criticalDenouncing capital and all of the bankingms was nothing new, the scandalous

was that the banker himself had said it;coming out from the mouth of Evil. It wasnt

iation, a critical analysis. It ca-me from thepower and enjoyed complete immunity.

ould admit its "crime" in broad daylight.The most recent profession of faith in a similar

came from Patrick LeLay, CEO of TFl, thetelevision channel: "Let's be realistic: the

of Trt is to help Coca-Cola sell its products.an advertising campaign to work properly,

viewert brains have to be accessible. The goalour programs is to make them available, by

Frorn ilorlneiion io ilelleiony ,i 37

il

lI

l

entertaining them, relaxing them between twomessages. 'What we sell to Coca-Cola is relaxed-brains time... Nothing is harder than gettingthem to open up."

\fle should pay our resPect to this amazingadmission and professional cynicism. It is widelyshared, as the following slogan for Poste Tlcomtestifies: "Money has no sex, but it will reproduce."And it could be condemned for the same reason,as it was by all fine minds. But this is not thereal problem. Even those who condemned LeLay's shocking statement were fascinated by itsinsolence. Doesnt this shameless flippancy mani-fest a greater freedom than the stonewalling ofcritical contestation? But this is the question:how could truth be lifted by an "arrogant" dis-course that gets the upper-hand by short-circuitingany critique?

Technocratic cynicism is not scandalous per se,but by the way it breaks a fundamental rule of oursocial and political game: corruPtion for some andprotesdng Evil for others. If the corrupt have norespect for this protocol, and show their handwithout sparing us their hypocrisy, then the ritualmechanism of denunciation goes haywire. Theprivilege of telling the truth eludes our grasp-inthe face ofcapital unveiled by the capitalists, even.

In fact, Le Lay takes away the only Power wehad left. He steals our denunciation. This is the

38 i The l\gotry ilf P'.'"rri'igr

scandal. Otherwise, how could you explain theoutrage when he revealed an open secret?

Instead of denouncing evil from the position ofgood (eternal moral position), he expresses evil

the position of evil. It is the best way to saybut it remains inadmissible. Tluth must be onside of Good. There can be no intelligence onside of Evil. Yet all those who outdo them-

with arrogance (Le Pen), cynicism (Le, pornography (Abu Ghraib), mythomaniaie L.) unmask the truth of the system in

ir abuse of it. The effects are both fascinatingrevolting-and they are much more effectiveconventional critiques.

A bitter truth: radicalness is on the side of thece of evil. Critical intelligence no longerup to the collapse of reality and to the

into total realiry. The truth, or the inhu-of this situation, can only be revealed from

inside, voluntarily or involuntarily, by theof the embezzlement of reality. Only evil

speak evil now-evil is a ventriloquist.itical intelligence is left to jump over its own

tadow: even in its radicalness, it remains piousd denunciatory. The curse of critical discourse ism reconcile itself secretly with those it criticizes by,denouncing them (and I am well aware thar wharI am saying here belongs ro rhis discourse).flenunciation will never have the shocking

ffiti.", ,,,,","'

Fr(n Dornlniiiol ir Hea't$rnon\, ,i 39

frankness of an unscrupulous discourse. ''e mustlook to the side of evil for the clearest indications,the harshest realiry. Only those who show no con-cern for contradiction or critical consideration intheir acts and discourse can, by this very means,shed full light, without remorse or ambiguiry, onthe absurd and extravagant character of the stateof things, through the play of objective irony.

\What is happening to critical thought-thethought of the Enlightenment and the Revolution,the thought that drove the analysis of capital, mer-chandise and spectacle throughout the nineteenthand twentieth centuries-is what happened beforeto religious, ethnic and linguistic phenomena. 7eare presently witnessing their formal renewal, butwithout any of their original substance. The reli-gious revival is epigonal and has nothing to dowith the fervor of past centuries. It presupposesthe dilution of faith as symbolic organization, thedisappearance of transcendence (and mae eventhe death of God). It is the specific product of adisenchanted situation of loss where everythingthat disappears is artificially revived. It is the abre-active product of a world where there is no reasonleft to believe in anything.

Current critical thought continues along itstrajectory but it is no longer the critical thought ofthe Enlightenment and modernity, which hadtheir own object and their own energy. It is merely

40 i li\e Aqory of l-rovver

qfphenomenon of a world where there ising left to analyze in the hopes ofsubverting

This thought is no longer currenr because weno longer in a "critical" siruation, like the his-

domination of capital. \fle have entered aic form of total realiry of closed-circuit

power that has even captured the negative.frat is left today is the specific product of this

situation where it no longer has areason to exist or ary efctiyeness.

Yet it is all the more prominent. The critique ofand spectacle has blossomed and spread

t$e point that it has become the most commonbecause it is the only discourse of consola-

that we have. But its tone has changed; it hasmore melancholy as subversion and trans-have lost popularity today.

simultaneous dimensions form the passagedomination to hegemony. It is a perilousjump, a three-part sacrifice:

l) Capital surpasses itself and turns against itselfin the sacrifice of value (the economic illusion).2) Power turns against itself in the sacrifice ofrepresentation (the democratic illusion).3) The entire system turns against itself in thesacrifice of reality (the metaphysical illusion).

Frorn Drynln;jtion lO Healrr1roni/ / 41

All three jump over their shadow.The shadow of capital is value. The shadow of

power is representation. The shadow of the systemis reality. They respectively move beyond Value,Representation and Reality-in a hyperspace thatis no longer economic, political or real but ratherthe hegemonic sphere.

Capital is both the total realization of Valueand its liquidation. Power is now the final form ofrepresentation: it only represents itself. The sys-tem is the total version of the Real and at the sametime its liquidation through the Virtual. This isthe hegemonic form.

The Economic lllusion

In any event, the question of "capital" must bereconfigured. Does something like capital stillexist, and, if there is a crisis, what is the essence ofthis crisis? \7e must try to pass "through thelooking glass," beyond the mirror of production.

Does exploitation still exist? Can we still talkabout alienation? Have we become the hostages(not the slaves, but the hostages) of a global marketunder the definitive sign of globalization? But canwe still talk of a "market"? And hasn't capitalismreached the point of destroying the conditions ofits own existence?

42 I Ti e lii;r:ny c Powtr

One of the problems of generalized exchange isthe market is both its ideal and its strategicion. It may be the fatal destiny of capital to

m the limit of exchange-to the total con-n of reality. In its historical (and Marxist)

tion, capitalism presided over rhe multipli-of exchanges in the name of value. Theobeys the law of value and equivalency.

limit here is the limit of classic capitalism.the crises of capital can always be resolved by

ins value.This is no longer true for the financial flows

international speculation that far surpass theof the market. Can we still speak of capital?

we keep the term and the concept and there-acknowledge the exponential strategy that

capital beyond its own limits, into a whirl-ind of exchanges where capital loses its very

which is the essence of the market-andan unbridled circulation that

the very concept of exchange to an end? Orwe consider that it is no longer capital at all butrething radically different, an exchange that isonly general but total-completely freed from

and markets-an exchange that, having lostrational principle, the principle of value,

integral just as reality, having lost itsprinciple, becomes integral realiry from

there is no salvation?

l-ro Dofiinaiion to ijegelcn-\,,i 43

In this light, capital in its historical formappears to be a lesser evil. In relation to a virtualuniverse, reality appears to be a lesser evil. Inview of hegemony, domination itself appears tobe a lesser evil. Take the example of the 7eb, theInternet, networks, blogs, etc. It is all free, "lib-erally'' deployed without economic constraints,beyond markets, in a frenzy of total communica-tion. This is a virtual catastrophe, the catastropheof total exchange that is not even protected bymoney or the market. \7e find ourselves wantingit all to be sub.iect to the law of value, taken inhand by capitalist power, to slow its exponentialdevelopment, to escaPe the ecstasF of (free, secularand obligatory) commsnlcx1iol-because it isleading to the dictatorship of forced exchange-but no one will escape.

The next stage, which can be seen in thesemysteriously free networks, is much worse thananything that was stigmatized as the mercan-tilization of exchange, where everything isassigned a price and a market. This influence(which is not strictly speaking the influence of aperson, a "capitalist" po\Mer or any political power)is the ascendancy of total, integral free exchange,universal wiring, universal connection. Capital, mar-kets, surplus value, merchandise and prices seemlike a lesser evil or protecdon against somethingworse. This is the virtual dimension of hegemony-

44 i lfie Agon)i of F'ower

it is different from the domination of capital anddifferent from the dimension of power in its strictlypolitical definition.

The Democratic lllusion

One might wonder, however, if hegemony is adirect continuation or perperuation of domination.trs it the same form deployed to its ultimate conse-quences? Or is there a moment where there is aift to a noncritical form-beyond internal criseshut not exempr from internal catastrophe or seld[ssolution through saturarion (like any system ate limit of its possibilities). A world of total,instantaneous, perpetual communication isuthinkable and, in any case, intolerable.

Hegemony corresponds to a phase of the satu-ion of power (political, financial, military and

cultural power) pushed by its own logic butto accomplish its possibilities fully-a dire

indeed (the story of the umbrella-maybe thefate of realizing possibilities fully is the fate of

kind?). Yet any acrion that tries to slowor power, that tries to keep them from

plishing all of their possibilities is their lasttheir last chance ro survive ".iust short of their

ilj'And if we let them, they will rush headlongeir end (taking us with them).

Frr:rn Dcininetiion io i-iegernon\, / 45

Is it better to let them do it, to let them followtheir fatal penchant for self-destruction throughsaturation and ultra-realization-or is it better toslow them down to avoid disaster? This is theparadox we confront in the Paroxysm of power'(Arrd, o.r.. again, the same global, universalproblem faces humanity and its "hypertelic" fatewhen it rushes to its end because it is too successfi'rl[technologically, sexually, demographically, etc'] )

It all depends on your idea of power' If youpresuppose that intelligence or the imaginationhold power, then the persistence of stupidiry or atleast the permanent absence of imagination frompower is inexplicable. (Unless you also suPpose ag.rr.t"l disposition among people to delegate theirsovereignty to the most inoffensive, least imagi-native of their fellow citizens, a malin gnie thatpushes people to elect the most nearsighted, cor-rupt person out of a secret delight in seeing thestupidity and corruption of those in power'Especially in times of trouble, people will votemassively for the candidate who does not askthem to think. It is a silent conjuration, analogousin the political sphere to the conspiracy of art inanother domain.)

\7e should abandon the democratic illusion ofimagination or intelligence in power that comesfrom the depths of Enlightenment ideology'The nave utopias of the 1960s must be revised:

46 / li:t* Agory o cvver

magination in power!"-"fke your dreams forErlily!"-"o limits to pleasure!" All of these4oeans were realized (or hyperrealized) in the

t of the system.If we remove the moral utopia of power-

as it should be in the eyes of those whoit-if we hypothesize that power only lives

parody or simulations of representarionis defined by the society that manipulates ir;

Ee accept the hypothesis that power is an ecto-ic, yet indispensable function, then people likeor Schwarzenegger fill their roles perctly.

that a country or a people has the leaders itbut that the leaders are an emanarion of

po\Mer. The political strucrure of theStates is in direct correlation to its globalion. Sush leads the United States in the

way as those :who exercise global hegemonythe rest of the planet. ('7e could even say

the hegemony of global power resembles theprivilege of the human species over all

) There is therefore no reason to think of

Povrer itself must be abolished-and not solelythe refusal to be dominated, which is at the

of all traditional srruggles-but also, justviolently, in the refusal to dominate (if the

to dominate had the same violence andsame energy as rhe refusal to be dominated,

-rcm Domil-ratr0n 1,C, NgemiJn,i I 47

the dream of revolution would have disap-peared long ago). Intelligence cannot, can neverbe in power because intelligence consists of thisdouble refusal. "If I could think that there werea few people without any Power in the world,then I would know that all is not lost" (EliasCanetti).

The Metaphysical Illusion

The reabsorption of critical negativity is echoedby an even more radical form of denial: the denialof realiry.

In simulation, you move beyond true and falsethrough parody, masquerade, derision to form animmense enterprise of deterrence. Deterrencefrom every historical reference, from all realiry inthe passage into signs. This strategy of destabiliza-tion, of discrediting, of divestment from realiry inthe form of parody, mockery, or masqueradebecomes the very principle of government,'is alsoa depreciation ofall value.

The question is no longer of a power or a"political" po\Mer connected to a history to formsof representation, to contradictions and a criticalalternative. Representation has lost its principleand the democratic illusion is complete-not asmuch by the violation of rights as by the simulation

48 i iit, gln:,/ oi i)a'ger

general uncertainty and the derealizationdl reality. Everyone is caught in the signs of

that occupy the entire space-and that areby everyone communally (take for example

rrsigned, embarrassed complicity in the riggedof the political sphere and polls).

ere, the sysrem works exponentially:

-not starring from value, but from the liqui-detion of value.--trot through representation, but through'' e liquidation of representation.---not from reality but from the liquidation ofncality.

in the name of which domination wasis terminated, sacrificed, which shouldIead to the end of domination. This is

the case, but for the sake of hegemony.he system doesnt care a fig for laws; it unleashes

n in every domain.

-Deregulation of value in speculation.-Deregulation of

representation in the various6rms of manipulation and parallel networks.

-Deregulation of realiry through informa-rion, the media and virtual realiry.

:rroil D,;:rininaiior: o *eginon.,/ / 49

From that point on: total immunity-one can nolonger counter the system in the name of one'sown principles since the system has abolishedthem. The end of all critical negativity' Closureof every account and all history' The reign ofhegemony. On the contrary, since it is no longerregulated by representation, or its own concept, orth. i*"g. of itsele the system succumbs to thefinal temptation: it becomes hypersensitive to itsfinal conditions and casts itself beyond its ownend according to the inflexible decrease of therates of reality.

The most serious of all forms of seldenial-not only economically or politically but metaphys-ically-is the denial of realiry. This immenseenterprise of deterrence from every historicalreference, this strategy of discrediting, of divestingfrom realiry in the form of parody, mockery or ma-querade, becomes the very principle of government'The new strategF-and it truly is a mutation-isthe self-immolation of value, of every system ofvalue, of seldenial, indifferentiation, rejectionand nullity as the triumphant command.

Moreover, the concept of the universal is thespecific product, within the human race, of acertain civilization called 7estern, and withinthat culture, of a privileged minoriry, a modern

50 i 1lie golY r -'oi'"'er

ntsia that has dedicated itself to thephical and technical edification of

But what can this concept mean, notoutside the human race (it is irrelevant for

rnima[, plant or cosmic realms, the inhumanrgcneral) but also in the major cultures other

our o\Mn (archaic, uaditional or Easrern orn that do not even have a term for it) or

in our own societies outside the civilized andivated classes where humanism and universal

iples have become hereditary. 7hat does theirersal mean in the eyes of immigranrs, popu-

left llow, entire zones of fracrure andin our own "overdeveloped" societies?

even in the privileged fringe, the high-techwhat does the universal mean for all the

people," all the high performanceor individuals according to both a global

an increasingly corporate, isolationist, pro-ionist evolution?

C-ontrary to what Immanuel Kant said, thes laughs at this universal law, but so does

hearr of humankind: not only living beingse vast majority of humans never obeyed it.

those who claim to obey it happily putsingular passions before any other ideal

is is no doubt, despite rhe concept, aauthntic way to be "human." Do they

believe in this ideal finality? No one

-rorn llomlnaiion io *egrnonv /'51

knows; the only sure thing is that they claim tomake others obey.

The discourse of the universal describes atautological spiral: it is held by the species thatconsiders itself superior to all others and withinthis species, by a minority that considers itselfthe holder of moral and universal ends, forminga veritable, "democratic" feudaliry.

tVhatever the case may be, there is a ma.iorinconsistency in continuing to use a discourse ofthe universal as a discourse of reference when ithas no meaning or effect anywhere-neither withglobal power nor in opposition to it.

To relativize our concept of the universal: withthe increasing globalization of the world, dis-crimination becomes more ferocious.

The cartography should not confuse thesezones beyond realiry with those that still give signsof reality in the same hegemonic system of global-ization, even though they do not function in thesame way. \e could even say that the gap separatingthem is growing and something that was onlya cultural singularity in a non-unified worldbecomes real discrimination in a globalized uni-verse. The more the world is globalized, the worstthe discrimination.

The two universes, the hyperreal and theinfrareal, seem to interpenetrate but are light yearsaway from each other. The deepest misery and

52 i lie A!lrn)/ oi 'rwer

of luxury coexist in the same geographic(take, for example the oil condominiums

audi Arabia and the favelas of Rio, but theseqrtreme cases). In fact, the entire planet is

on the principle of definitive discrim-between two universes-which no longer

any knowledge of each other. Global powerits integral control over rhe other world,

has all the means necessary for its extermina-frn- It is the tear in the universal. As for the

uences of this tear, the upheaval it can, we have ns idsx-sr(sept for what is already

today (although it is only the beginning):only response to this increasingly violent

&crimination is an equally violent form, ter-'srism. An extreme reacrion to this situation ofhpossible exchange.

ffiich leads us to Europe. In its currenr form,hrope is a nonevent. It was first an idea (maybet:rdng in the Middle Ages, a reality before anItcal). Now it is no longer an idea or a realiry butevirrual reality referring to a model of simulationn which it must adapt. From the perspective of;rojection at any price, the will of the people is ansracle or at least an indifferent parameter or andibi. The "yes" vore comes from on high, and weGm now see that the people are Europe's skeletonfo the closet.

FrLlrn Doininai'ilan io .ieqertonv ./ 53

This virtual Europe is a caricature of globalpo\Mer. It wants to fi.rd its niche in the worldord.r, to represent an economic power thatrivals the ridiculous image of its American BigBrother. Europe is organized according to thesame liberal principles, and other than a few lastgasps of ,.rrii*.ni"l socialism, is aligned witht"h. tt od.l of flux and global deregulation' It isincapable of inventing a new rule f1 the game(whlft is also the struggle of the Left on thenational level).

'7'ithout its own political structure or histori-cal reason, Europe can only desire expansion and

proliferation inio the void through indefinite;d.mo.ratic" annexation, just like global Power'Of course, all of the peripheral countries want tojoin this by-product of globalizatlol'. just asE.rrop.rrm ir.r* of reaching the global lwel'

E,r.op."t, have the same relationship toAmeric global Polver as other countries (likeTurkey, foi .*"-pl.) have to Europe' Turkeys.rr..y ir,o Europe, outside any political consider-

"tio.rr, may be ievealing in terms of this paradox:

Europeans "from birth" are not really moderneithei; they have not truly entered hyper-moderniry'They are in fact resisting it, and in every country,h.r. is something that resists generalizedexchange, the vertigo ofuniversal exchange'

Is it good ot bdi Does Europe have to be

54 i The ltgo:'ri' of Pt-'wer

mlutely modern? Should it resist the grasp of[gemony, while being its best accomplices?

irrkey wanting to enter Europe is not the leaste paradoxes at a time when France is giving

of wanting to leave. The sudden rise of the{o" vote during the referendum was significant

this regard. It is the best example of a vital orreaction in defense against the consensual

of the "Yes," against the referendumtimatum in disguise. There is no need to have a

conscience to have this reflex: it is theic rekindling of negativity in the face of

ve positiviry to the coalition of "divine"hrope, the Europe of good conscience, the onen the right side of universaliry-with all othersf into the shadows of history.

The forces of Good were completely wrongout the perverse efFects of an excess of Good and,le unconscious lucidity that tells us ro "never sideri those who are already right." A good exampleJa response to hegemony that is not the work of" - negative or the result of critical thought (theilditi.rl reasons of the "No" are no better than&ose of the "Yes"). It is a response in the form oft1xrre and simple challenge to the saturation of theq;stem, the implementation (once again, beyondlditical considerations) of a principle of reversion,dreversibility against the hegemonic principle. Agmd example of the'parallax of Evil."

Frorfi i-lorliniii!-)r't i He,Jemorv / 55

56 i Ts Ailon.v cf Pr-,',ver

7e have here the profile of the new rype of con-frontation characterizing the era of Hegemony' Itis not a class struggle or a fight for liberation onthe global level (since the "liberatioti'ofexchangeand democracy, which were the counterpoint todomination, are the strategies of hegemony. Thke,for example, England's Presence in Zanzibat byfreeing the slaves in the late nineteenth century,England was able to take control of East Africa)'It is an irreducibiliry an irreducible antagonism tothe global principle ofgeneralized exchange.

In other words, a confrontation that is nolonger precisely political but metaphysical andsymbolic in the strong sense. It is a confrontation,a divide that exists not only at the heart of thedominant power, but at the heart of our individualexistence.

-April2005

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THE WHITE TERROR OF WORLD ORDER

tbsorbing the negative conrinues to be theproblem. (hen the emancipated slave internalizesSe masrer, the work of the negative is abolished.Domination becomes hegemony. Power can showhelf positively and overrly in good consciencemd complete self-evidence. It is unquestionablemd global. But the game is not over yet. For whilefic slave internalizes the master, power also inter-rllizes the slave who denies it, and it denies itselflin the process. Negativity reemerges as irony,

ing and autoJiquidation internal to power.is how the slave devours and cannibalizes the

from the inside. As power absorbs the, it is devoured by what it absorbs. There

A catastrophic dialectic has replaced rhe "worke negative." Critical thought, or any attemprarack the sysrem from the inside, is in a complete

aporia. After voluntary servitude, which was thesecret key to exercising domination, one couldnow speak instead of involuntary compliciryconsensus and connivance with the 'V'orld Orderby everything that seems to oppose it. Images,even radical-critical ones, are still a part of thecrime they denounce, albeit an involuntaryone. \7hat is the impact of a film like DarwinNightmare, which denounces racial discriminationin Thnzania? It will tour the 'l'estern world andreinforce the endogamy, the cultural and politicalautarky of this separate world through images andthe consumption of images.

And yet by the same token all critical negativiry,all the work of the negative is abolished, devouredby signs and simulacra. In the context of hege-mony, the historical work of critical thought,the relationship of forces against oppression,radical subjectivity against alienation are all(virtually) in the past. Simply because this newhegemonic configuration (which is no longerthe configuration of capitalism at all) has itselfabsorbed the negative and used it for a leap forwardthrough the meanders of cynical reasoning orthe tricks of history.

The absolute negative (terrorism, internaldeterrence) responds to the absolute positive ofpositivized power. (hen domination becomeshegemony, negativity becomes terrorism. Thus

60,/ irc Ag.rn\, oi fo',,/or

\emony is a meta-stable form because it has$eorbed rhe negative-but by the same roken,bcking the possibility of dijectical balance, itmrnfin5 infinitely fragile. Its victory, therefore, ismlyapparent, and its total positiviry, rhis resorptionofthe negative, anticipates its own dissolution. Itb erefore both the twilight of critical thoughtend the agony of power.

Through a reverse effect, however, the system1@ters a catastrophic dialectic. But this dialectic3 a r cry from the Marxist dialectic and thedeological role of negation.

For this strategy of development and growth3 tal. As it entirely fulfills itself, in

" firr"l

eievement that no negativiry can hinder, it[rcomes incapable of surpassing itself ,.upwards,,@teburu and initiates a process of self-annihilation(@tebungin the sense of dissolution)._

For the system (in the conrexr of global power),fiis strategy of development and gio*th is fatal.l[e system cannor prevent its destiny from beingreomplished, integrally realized, and therefore&iven into automatic self-destrucrion by thercnsible mechanisms of its reproducrion.

Its shape is similar to what is called ,.rurbo_:1pitalism." The term "turbo" should be takenfrerally in this expression. It means that the sys-h as a whole is no longer driven by historical5r,ces but is absorbed by its final conditions-

iro Wirito lerrtr oi \,.rbi1i_1 L\rcior i 61

hastened to its definitive end (like a turbo enginesucking in the space in front of it, creatingavac-uum and the force of attraction of a vacuum). It isnot a progressive, continuous evolution, even if itis confrontational and contradictory. Instead, it isa vertiginous, irresistible attraction to its own end.

If negativity is totally engulfed by the system, ifthere is no more work of the negative, positivirysabotages itself in its completion' At the height ofits hegemony, povrer cannibalizes itself-and thework of the negative is replaced by an immensework of mourning.

''e can even forget about capital and capitalism'Didnt they reach the point where they woulddestroy their own conditions of existence? Can westill speak of a "market" or even of a classicaleconomy? In its historical definition, capitalismpresided over the multiplication of exchangesunder the auspices of value. The market obeys thelaw of value and equivalency. And the crises ofcapital can always be resolved by regulating value.

This is no longer true for the financial flowsand international speculation that far surpass thelaws of the market. Can we still speak of capitalwhen faced with an exPonential strategy thatpushes capital beyond its limits in a whirlwind ofexchanges where it loses its very essence and is

62 ,/ Tile Agrv oi Povvcr

dispersed in an unbridled circulation that bringsrhe very concept ofexchange to an end?

Having lost its rational principle, the principleof value, exchange becomes total just as realiryheving lost its reality principle, becomes total reality.h may be the fatal destination of capital ro go rorhe end of exchange-toward a total consumptionof,realiry. In any case, we are bound for this gen-tralized exchange, this frenetic communication:nd information that is the sign of hegemony.

The dimension of hegemony is different fromat of capital and different from the dimensionof power in its strictly political definition. It is nolonger a question of political power tied to a his-mry and a form of representation. Representationiself has lost its principle and the democraticifiusion is complete. Not through the violation ofritts but through the simulation of values andtf,e derealization of all reality. The masqueradeegain, everyone caught in the signs of powerand communing in the rigged unfolding of thelrclitical stage.

Vith the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger asGovernor of California, we are deep in themasquerade, where politics is only a game ofilolatry and marketing. It is a giant step towardlhe end of the system of representation. This is the

Tro y''vi.lrto oryor of V'.,ibrtrl Orcer ,, 60

destiny of contemporary politici2ns-1hs5s \M[rsIive by the show will die by the show. This is truefor both "citizens" and politicians. It is theimmanent justice of the media. You want thepower of the image? Then you will die through itsreplay. The carnival of the image is also (se10cannibalization through the image.

One should not conclude too hastily that thedegradation of American political practices is adecline in power. Behind this masquerade, there isa vast political strategy (certainly not deliberate; itwould require too much intelligence) that beliesour eternal democratic illusions. By electingSchwarzenegger (or in Bushs rigged election in2000), in this bewildering parody of all systems ofrepresentation, America took revenge for thedisdain of which it is the object. In this way, itproved its imaginary power because no one canequal it in its headlong course into the democraticmasquerade, into the nihilist enterprise of liqui-dating value and a more total simulation thaneven in the areas of finance and weapons. Americahas a long head start. This extreme, empirical andtechnical form of mockery and the profanation ofvalues, this radical obscenity and total impiery ofa people, otherwise known as "religious," this iswhat fascinates everyone. This is what we enjoyeven through rejection and sarcasm: this phenom-enal vulgariry a (political, televisual) universe

64,'Titrl Agi-rlit; o P':t'er

lrought to the zero degree of culture. It is also thercet of global hegemony.

I say it without irony, even with admiration: this how America, through radical simulation, domi-naes the rest of the world. It serves as a modelrLile taking its revenge on rhe rest of the world,lhich is infinitely superior to it in symbolic rerms.he challenge of America is the challenge of des-lmate simulation, of a masquerade it imposes onSe rest of the world, including the desperate simu-ltrurn of military power. Carnivalization of power..frnd that challenge cannot be met: we have neithere finality or a counter-finality that can oppose it.

[n its hegemonic function, power is a virtualmnfiguration that metabolizes any element tocrve its own purposes. It could be made of-ountless intelligent particles, but its opaquerftucture would not change. It is like a body thatctanges its cells constantly while remaining therme. Soon, every molecule of the Americanration will have come from somewhere else, as ifLy transfusion. America will be Black, Indian,[Iispanic, and Puerto Rican while remainingmerica. It will be all the more mythically,lmerican in that it will no longer be "authentical-[y" American. And all the more fundamentalist inrlst it will no longer have a foundation (eveneough it never had one, since even the FoundingEethers came from somewhere else). And all the

ho Wiiile fe.ran o\,,^,,Joild Otcen i 65

more bigoted in that it will have become, in fact,multiracial and multicultural. And all the moreimperialist in that it will be led by the descendantsof slaves. That is the subtle and unassailable logicofpower; it cannot be changed.

This global masquerade of power Passesthrough several phases. First, in the name of uni-versals, the 7est imposes its political and economicmodels on the entire world along with its principleof technical rationality. That was the essence of itsdomination but not yet its quintessence. Beyondeconomics and politics, its quintessence relies onthe hold of simulation, an operational simulationof every value, every culture-that is where hege-mony today asserts itself. No longer throughexporting techniques, values, ideologies butthrough the universal extrapolation ofa parody ofthese values. Underdeveloped countries keep align-ing themselves on a simulacrum of developmentand growth; they get their independence from asimulacrum of democrary, and every endangeredculture dreams of a staged rehabilitation-all fasci-nated by the same universal model (of whichAmerica, while benefiting from it, is the firstvictim). Thus, after imposing its dominationthrough History the 7est is now imposing itshegemony through the FARCE of History. Globalporver is the power of the simulacrum.

, Testern civilization also had a motiveevenge. It had to take revenge on others for theof its own values (many people underestimatefierce jealousy mixed with nostalgia of a disen-

culture for all singular cultures). And itues to do so in the conrext of globalization, at bottom, beyond its technical operarion,

a giant project meant to symbolically liquidatevalues through consensus or force.After the sacrifice of value, after the sacrifice of

don, after the sacrifice of realiry the'W'estnow characterizedby the deliberate sacrifice of

through which a human being keepsvalue in his or her own eyes.

The terrorists' potlatch against the'W'est is theirdeath. Our potlatch is indigniry immodesryniry, degradation and abjection. This is the

t of our 6uhu1s-vhere the stakes keepOur truth is always on the side of unveiling,imation, reductive analysis-the truth of

Se repressed-exhibition, avowal, nudity-nothingtrue unless it is desecrated, objectified, strippedits aura, or dragged onsrage.Indifferendation of values but also indifferenceourselves. '7'e cannot involve our own death

we already are dead. 7e throw this indif-and abjection at orhers like a challenge:

challenge to defile themselves in rerurn, todcny their values, to strip naked, confess, admit-

66 / Tre A0.rnv of Po,,^,rer Tirc riViiitc Tcroi o i'vbrii_i Order / 6/

to respond with a nihilism equal to our own.'0'etry to take it all from them by force: through thehumiliations of Abu Ghraib, prohibiting veils inschool. But it is not enough for our victory: theyhave to come on their own, sacrifice themselves onthe altar of obsceniry transparensy, pornographyand global simulation; they have to lose theirsymbolic defenses and take the path of neoliberdorder, total democracy and integrated spectacle.

In this sense, we can, with Boris Groys, con-ceive of the hypothesis of a double potlatch: the\Testern potlatch of nullity, self-degradation,shame, and mortification opposed to the terroristpotlatch of death. But the deliberate sacrifice bythe 7est of all its values, of everything throughwhich a culture holds value in its own eyes, in thisprostitution of the self thrown into the face of theOther as a weapon of mass deterrence-seductionthrough emptiness and challenge to the Other(Islam, but also the rest of the world) to prostituteitself in return, to unveil itself; to give up all itssecrets and lose all sove reignty-does thisimmense self-immolation constitute a veritablesymbolic response to the challenge of the terrorists?(Lett not speak of war or a fight "against evil,'which are admissions of a total inability torespond symbolically to the challenge of death.)

Potlatch versus potlatch-does one balancethe other? One might say that one is a potlatch by

68 / irO Ai:tcny Ci Dilwrr

(the potlatch of death) and the other a,potlatch by default (selmockery and shame). In

case, they do not match each other equallyone should speak of an asymmetrical potlatch.should one think that, in the end, no form,

,DE even the challenge of death, of extreme sacri-fice, can be considered superior, nor can the ter-nrist challenge be seen as superior to the inverseVestern challenge, and therefore send each onetack to its respective delirium?

-What is at stake in global confrontation is thisn to generalized exchange, the unbridled

uchange of all differences, the challenge for otherohures to equal us in deculturarion, the debasementof values, the adhesion to the mosr disenchantednodels. This confrontation is not quite a "clash of.civilizations," bur it is not economic or politicalder, and today it only concerns the \7est andtrdam in appearance. Fundamentally it is a duel,md its stakes are symbolic: physical and mental\uidation, a universal carnivalization imposed bye \est at rhe cost of its own humiliation, itsrymbolic expropriation-against all of the singu-hrities that resist it. Challenge versus challenge?ilotlatch versus potlatch? Does the slow-deathrategy or systemaric mortification equal the stakesof a sacrificial death? Can this confrontation comeb an end and what could be the consequences ifoae or the other wins?

-iiro \^,/i-rrle leor ('vl,/i-ld Oriier./ 69

The response to domination is well known:slave revolt, class struggle, all the historical formsof revolt and revolutien-*1s metamorphoses ofthe work of the negative. History, as we knew itand rewrote it along its evolution to an idealend. The response to hegemony is not as simple:irredentism, dissidence, antagonism, violentabreaction-but also fascination and totdambivalence. For we all are part and parcel ofthis hegemony (unlike the clear distinctionbetween dominants and dominated).

Thence both a vital, visceral resistance togeneralized exchange, to total equivalence andconnection, to vast prostitution and a vertigi-nous attraction to this technological fair, thisspectacular masquerade, this nullity. At bottomit is clear that this apogee of global power is alsothe apotheosis of the negative, the triumph ofresignation, ofthe renunciation by the species ofits own values. There is nothing more excitingthan this vertigo-no longer the work of thenegative but the vertigo of denial and artifice!\hence this dual, insoluble postulate: opposingthis global po\Mer and losing oneself in it. Anambivalence that we all experience at eachmoment and which is the mirror in each one ofus of the global antagonism.

his hegemonic simulation, a configuration thatrrrns lliurnphant and unyielding, has its reverse,fo revulsive effects. By virtually yielding to this

dynamic and exaggerating it in severalmys, all of these would-be emerging countries

become submerging instead. They slowlyfovade the'?'estern sphere, nor on a competitive

but like a ground swell.This invasion occurs in many ways, like a viral

hfiltration. It is the problem of global, more orNhs clandestine immigration (Hispanics are literally

ibalizing the United States). But also in theuntemporary forms of terror, a true filterableirus, made up of terrorism and counterterrorism,

which is a violent abreaction to global domi-destabilizing it from the inside. The global

is cannibalized by terror.However, there are other, more political formsthese tendencies hostile to Testern models. AII

these countries that we \Mant to acculturate bywith the principles of political and economic

nionaliry, with the global market and democracy,a universal principle and a history that is not

ficir own, of which they have neither the ends normsxn5-xll of these countries which make uprest of the world-they give us the impressionBrazil for example) that they will never be

to this exogenous model of calculationmd growth, that they are deeply allergic to it. And

70 1 )e.ago.ry o Pcwer Tire WhiLe Iolot of Worid artier t 11

in fact do we, Testerners, masters of the world,still have its ends and means? Do we still measureup to this universal undertaking of mastery thatnow seems to surpass us in every domain andfunction like a trap ofwhich \Me are the first victims?

History itself is a product for \Testern export\We dump on others a desire for history (throughnational conflicts, international institutions, accessto the global market) while for us, in realiry, histo-ry is over, in the sense that it unfolds on its own,on automatic pilot and more often than not in aloop. For us, the mirror of history the continuityof history is shattered; we live in an instant anddisincarnate currentness in which we take no moretrouble, according to Dostoyevst phrase, than toprolong history or rather the end of historyimmersed in the euphoric banaliry that Heideggercalled the second Fall of humaniry. But the others,those who did not experience this historic stage,this mirror stage, can only want to enjoy it them-5slvs5-dlsaming of the Testern Power in whieverything that took the form of history culmi-nates, and perhaps dreaming to destroy its symbolsand take a stand against it. It is a strange situationwherein all these peoples who at the same timedream of entering history, or rather today in thepacified, securized, extraterritorial, extranationalzone of universal free trade, in the \or[d Order of\Telfare of which America is obviously the model'

72 / 1ne Agcrlv o i--olr,/:r

end simultaneously resist it. A double contradictoryrefiemenr of which Tirrkey is a fine example: toin Europe for the Tirrks means leaving an archaic'rructure to enter modernity, to become a part oftre technological universe of consumerism andiimulation, of the cosmopolitan exchange of signsend the formal liberry to use them at onet leisure.lc the same time, ir means partaking in a radicaluitique of this political economy, a denunciationdthe culture that fascinates them and remainingdceply allergic to the principle of exchange andmdifferentiated exchange that requires the sacri-firr of their distinctive cultural traits.

In the end, if we look closely, itt the same situa-fun we are in as individuals at the hean of modernncieties-we all experience an irresistible urge forSis sociery of signs and simulacra that is at the enddhistory and a deep resistance to this voluntarysritude. So much so that we might retrospectively

whether all this history, all of this Testerniry and modernity really took place or

rkher this is all a parody of an event that had, leaving us to share its spoils. This would

the "farce" of history that Marx mendons andwhich we involved as accomplices those who did

even benefit from it.History that repeats itself turns to farce. But a

that repeats itself ends up making a history.means that by repearing and doubling

re \r,,/lite -iror 0 \r,."rorliJ Orrjr^r r, Z3

themselves up, even simulacra end up forming ourmaterial destiny-the only day of reckoning wehave the right to now. (And mae the only retro-spective truth of history that, in this hypothesis, didnot even wait to be repeated to become a farce')

'l'e can in this sense speak of the ephemeral,instable and reversible character of modernity(and of reality in general), and a different rate ofuniversalization of rational values and the principleof reality that presides over them.

One should not believe that reality is equallydistributed over the surface of the globe as if wewere dealing with an objective world that wasequal for everyone. Zones, entire continents havenot seen the appearance ofreality and its principle:they are underdeveloped in this generic sense thatis more profound than the economic, technical orpolitical. The lest, after passing through a (his-toric) stage ofreality, entered the (virtual) stage ofultra-realiry. By contrast, a majoriry of the "rest ofthe world" have not even reached the stage ofreality and (economic, political, etc.) rationality.Between the two, there are zones of realiryinterstices, alveoli, shreds of realiry that survive inthe heart of globalization and the hyper-reality ofnstwqlfu-a bit like the shreds of territory thatfloat to the surface of the map in Borgs' fable-One could speak of an index of reality, a rate ofrealiry on the planet that could be mapped out like

74 i'lite Agony oi Po\4,er

ldrthrates or the levels of atmospheric pollution.What would the maximum rate of reality be?

k remains to be seen whether this underdevelop-ment is a curse, if the non-access to the real ande rational is an absolute tragedy, or its contrary.One can ask this question when considering theadvanced zones, the hyper-modern zones like ourown that are already far from realiry that have lostfus principle, that have devoured it in a way, in the.ryace of two centuries, like any mineral fuel ornatural deposit (moreover, the exhausting of realitygoes hand in hand with the exhausting of naturalresources). Hyper-real zones, still sub-lunar butalready extraterresrrial, at once globalized. and.dercrritorialized.

Opposition to global hegemony cannot be the,rtme as opposition to traditional oppression. Itcen snly be something unpredictable, irreduciblem the prevenrive terror of programming, forced

ion, irreducible to the slhite terror of theorder. Something antagonistic, in the literal

, that opens a hole in this '7'estern agony.thing that leaves a trace in the monotony of

global order of terror. Something that rein-a form of impossible exchange in this

alized exchange. Hegemony is only brokenthis rype of event, by anything that irrupts asunexchangeable singularity. A revolt, therefore,

Tre vlrite Teror- r:',,/v'oriti Craer l75

that targets systematic deregulation under thecover of forced conviviality, that targets the totalorganization of realiry.

The high point of the struggle against dominationwas the historic movement of liberation, be itpolitical, sexual or otherwiss-x 6enlinuqusmovement, with guiding ideas and visible actors.

But liberation also occurred with exchangesand markets, which brings us to this terrifi,ingparadox: all of the liberation fights againstdomination only paved the way for hegemony,the reign of general exchange-against whichthere is no possible revolution, since everythingis already liberated.

Total revolt responds to total order, not justdialectical conflict. At this point, it is double ornothing: the system shatters and drags the uni-versal away in its disintegration. It is vain towant to restore universal values from the debrisof globalization. The dream of rediscovered uni-versality (but dld it ever exist?) that could put astop to global hegemony, the dream of a reinven-tion of politics and democracy and, as for us, thedream of a Europe bearing an alternative modelof civilization opposed to neoliberal hegemony-this dream is without hope. Once the mirror ofuniversality is broken (which is like the mirrorstage of our modernity), only fragments remain,

76 i irre rl\llony oi Power

rcattered fragments. Globalization automaticallytntails, in the same movement, fragmentationad deepening discrimination-and our fate is fora universe that no longer has anything universalout it-fragmenrary and fractal-but that nodoubt leaves the field free for all singularities: theuorst and the best, the most violent and themost poetic.

-Montreal, October 2005

l.ire \'Yr-rlt* :enor itf 'rtirid a,:rlet I 77

WHERE GOOD GROWS

. Marx: Until now philosophers were contentwith interpreting the world. Now it has tobe changed.

Against Marx Tbday nansforming the worldis not enough. h will happen no matter what.'W'ltat

we argentb need todalt is to interpretthis transform4si6n-5s that the world doesnot do it without as, and ends up being aworld witltout us.

The current revolution is different than previousf,istorical lsvsluliqns-it is a truly anthropologicalrenolution: a revolution in the automatic perfectionof technical devices and in the definitive disqual-ification of human beings, of whom they are noteren aware. At the hegemonic stage of technology,

of world power, human beings have lost theirfreedom, but they have also lost their imagina-tion. They have been made unemployed in a waythat goes far beyond work: it is a mental andexistential unemployment, replaced by dominantmachines. These technical layoffs suggest theopposite of what the term usually means: themachines are not defective; they are so efficientthat there is nothing left to do with one's life,whose very reproduction has become automatic.The obsolescence of humans has reached its termi-nal phase. Their fate is definitively beyond theirreach. In the end, human beings will only havebeen an infantile illness of an integral technologicdreality that has become such a given that \Me areno longer aware of it, except in its transcendentaldimensions of space and time.

This revolution is not economic or political. It isan anthropological and metaphysical one. And it isthe final revolution-there is nothing beyond it. Ina way, it is the end of history although not in thesense ofa dialectical surpassing, rather as the begin-ning of a world without humans. \X/hile history hada subject, there is no subject of the end of history.No more work of negative or historical finaliry...

It is the final stage of a world that we havegiven up interpreting, thinking or even imaginin