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2. Its Only a Game Show
What type of world does the conservative inhabit? What planet
are these people on? ThinkBig Brother.
Lets imagine we are contestants on the show or, better still, in
the Big Brother house itself, playing the game along with the
rest of them. What do we know? Firstly, this is not real. Everyone
admits, even before they arrive on set (and make no mistake this
is a purpose-built set in a television studio, not a house
requisitioned for the show) that its a wholly artificial situation.
The house has bedrooms, a spacious kitchen-cum-lounge-diner, a
garden in fact, all the amenities typical of a luxury apartment inthe ubiquitous Ikea style. It looks like a real house even if it isnt
remotely.
Then, of course, there are the housemates themselves. What
planets are they from? We know nothing about them. However,
we can safely say that, in the ten seconds since we arrived, these
are the last people on earth we would ever dream of socializing
with, let alone choose to have as friends. With their cosmetic
smiles and fake tans they look so awkward and vulnerable, like a
batch of beauty queens parachuted into a war zone. Do we really
look like them? At this point it suddenly dawns on us that the
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reason behind their panicked expressions is that they too have
only just set eyes on us. In the first few moments of being thrust
into an unfamiliar social environment group psychology takes
over; we instinctively strive for equilibrium, a happy medium of
socially acceptable behaviour (which may of course vary widely
from one situation to the next). Communication at this stage of
the proceedings is phatic, or in other words meaningless.
Hello and What do you do for a living? are not expressions
of genuine interest in us as individuals, they are merely being
employed so as to establish social contact, as well as to burn up
precious time. After all, everyone knows how embarrassing and
unwelcome breakdowns in communication can be, especially TV
producers.
Once equilibrium is established more complex behaviour patterns
begin to surface. People drop their guard and personalities
emerge. Alliances, if not genuine friendships, are formed between
housemates, for ultimately we cannot forget that this is not just a
game, its a competition. And as with all personality contests or
beauty pageants the most popular contestants come to the fore not
by virtue of individual merit but through structural opposition.
The world of the game show is one in which the talents of any
one contestant are set off against those of all the rest. The winner
is the one who manages to avoidbeing eliminated. Rest assured
s/he wont end up as the most popular housemate, but the least
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unpopularamongst us. The fact that someone will win is always
conditioned by the fact that someone else wont. For there to be
winners there must first be losers. Not only could there be no
winners without losers, winning would make no sense without
them. Losers make winners what they are.
Of course in the world of Big Brother nobody likes to admit any
of this. It may be something we suspect deep down (we all know
were losers really), but none of us would ever dream of
admitting it. Nobody appreciates being called a loser, even and
especially if its the truth. The longer we remain in this place with
a bunch of frankly unappealing strangers, the more we need to
bite our lip and bide our time. Clearly we have to watch what we
say here and to whom, since one word out of place and theequilibrium is lost and were back to where we started, all of us
pretending again, trying to avoid that horrible feeling of mutual
revulsion and antagonism. In this situation communication is key
and we must be sure to use it to our advantage.
But is there a gap between what people are saying and what they
really think? We suspect as much and there is no getting away
from it. Even during the frankest of exchanges, or in those
intimate, boozed-up revelations to a trusted confidant in the early
hours of the morning, there is, at the back (or front) of our minds,
the lingering question of whether this person is for real, or just
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having us on. Are they on the make? Is s/he telling us this
because s/he needs to get it off her/his chest, or is it simply what
s/he wants us to hear?
At least the internaldynamic of the Big Brother experience feels
like therapy. The set resembles an asylum: it has one common
dormitory. There is nothing remotely intrusive about this since
its intended to socialize the patients, to make them confront
their issues and get to know one another. Group therapy
involves discipline and communal responsibility. This is not to
say the house is a prison, at least not from the inside. Although
there is a fairly strict regime and (apparently) a set of rules
governing it all, our enjoyment is not forbidden, its positively
encouraged. In any case none of us are forced to be here and arefree to leave at any time. We are outpatients in this sense.
All in all, then, there is no reason to suspect the other housemates
oftotaldishonesty towards us. In the world of Big Brother we
assume that everyone has a breaking point, a natural threshold for
boredom, anger and hostility and that any of us, no matter how
together we might feel, can be pushed over the edge at any
time: this is simply what makes us human. We all have our
demons, even if some of us are more practised at keeping them in
check than others. But what about Big Brother itself? Isnt
there a degree of disingenuousness, if not exactly dishonesty,
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about its role in all of this. This faceless bisexual counselor
who monitors our behaviour day and night never reveals its
human side, either in the figure of an actual person or a genuine
personality. While s/he knows everything about us we know next
to nothing about him/her. In fact, given that Big Brothers
surveillance of the house knows no bounds it would seem that, in
reality, there is never a time when we could safely drop our guard
in the presence of others. How could we ever afford to if we are
always being watched? Wouldnt those intimate moments be
exposed by Big Brother as false or manipulative? Obviously they
might have involved genuine acts of human emotion, but if we
know we are being watched then isnt there always the risk that
our actions might appearfake?
This is the major challenge of being a contestant on this show.
Even when were being serious Big Brother confronts us with our
own superficiality. But surely the point is this: we know our own
selves better than Big Brother ever could. Big Brother onlysees
what we say and do, it cant look inside our minds. This is true up
to a point. It is a conservative world we are living in, but its still
liberal enough to enable us to think and do as we please, with the
emphasis on thinking, since the freedom of thought is the bedrock
of Western liberal democracy (as long as its done in private). But
what does privacy mean here? Does it mean when no one else
is looking? And if it does then how could we hope to think
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anything that Big Brother isnt party to? What does thinking
really amount to in a world like this apart from the attempt to
prevent Big Brother from recording whats going through our
minds? We may very well assume that no one has the power to
determine what we think, since thinking is a private act. But in
here onepracticalfalse move is enough to give the game away
and expose us for what we really are.
There is, however, a sense in which these reservations may be
completely misguided. After all, the title of this chapter presents
us with a somewhat different interpretation of things: namely, if
its only a game show then why should we care? Why should it
matter what we really think or equally what our housemates
think of us if, ultimately, we can never really tell? If ourthoughts and attitudes (at least in the house) are completely
conditioned through our attempts to avoid revealing them to Big
Brother then why bother? Wouldnt it be better to adopt a much
less paranoid, more ironic attitude that made no attempt to
conceal anything from anybody else? This might involve
discussing openly who in the house we hate, deliberately
contradicting ourselves, and generally behaving in an
unpredictable and highly irresponsible manner.
Irony, we are led to believe, perfectly suits our postmodern
condition. Postmodern irony makes a mockery out of everyone. It
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shows up the inherent stupidity and meaninglessness of our lives
through encouraging us to loosen up, lose our inhibitions and stop
worrying: life is short, so enjoy it while you can! Your wife ran
off with another man? Look on the bright side: at least she didnt
elope with another woman! On second thoughts, shame I couldnt
have been there to watch. Perhaps shell come back when she
gets fed up with him if youre really unlucky, that is Is this
postmodern approach enough to convince us that our world isnt
so bad after all? It may not have our best interests at heart but
then again who does? Rather than trying to win the competition
outright wouldnt it make a lot more sense in the circumstances
just to be ourselves, which in circumstances such as these
would amount to going with the flow or wherever the mood takes
us? The difficulty in following this advice is its inherentduplicity. In other words it exempts itself from its own advice.
How could we take advice from someone for Big Brother
isnt any one person, remember who makes a mockery out of all
principles and a principle out of all mockery?
Joking aside, lets assume for arguments sake that every world
has rules that need to be observed and that Big Brother, in being
part of ours, is no exception. Basically, the world is made up of
contradictions, but that doesnt mean it has to descend into chaos
and anarchy. Big Brother encourages us to let our hair down, but
not too much. No one could seriously contemplate could we?
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murdering one of the other housemates, or forming a religious
sect that involved sado-masochistic rituals and human sacrifice,
even if the postmodern attitude, with its celebration of irreverence
and the inherently meaningless, makes light of such things. Not
only would such behaviour not endear us to Big Brother itself, it
would in all likelihood alienate the viewing audience, those good
people on the outside looking in. Common sense demands that we
should always observe the bounds of taste and decency even if
occasionally those bounds are stretched. However meaningless
life becomes there are always other people to consider; not
forgetting above all the programmes sponsors.
All this is typical of conservatives, including those self-styled
liberals who wax lyrical about the enormous benefits offreedom and liberal democracy. Big Brother gives us the
freedom to say or do whatever we like as long as whatever we say
or do meets with its own standards of communication. If we
refused to communicate properly then we really would be
threatening the future of the game. Our world wouldnt exactly
collapse. But it would become uninhabitable. Big Brother makes
little secret of the fact that the game we are playing is
meaningless. But we should all play along, not because it forces
us to, but because the alternative to playing the game i.e. not
playing is unthinkable. Winston Churchill once said that our
conservative world wasnt the best of all possible ones, it was
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simply the least bad. Even if we dont believe in its values we
should respect them for fear of making the world a lot worse than
it already is.
Communication, then, lies at the heart of the matter. As the
Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, the limits
of my language are the limits of my world. Language whether
by language we mean conscious or unconscious thoughts,
dreams, verbal or non-verbal, phatic or written communication
is what we share as a community, what separates us from mere
animals, and serves to keep us all sane. Even the crazed
delusions of the schizophrenic patient require a language of sorts.
He may be communicating in a world of his own, he may be
living in a dream world, but nothing is so meaningless as toescape the attentions of Big Brother even if it makes no
apparent sense to the rest of us. Ultimately, we all exist in worlds
of our own, even if they arent exactly the ones we choose to
inhabit. This is how Big Brother operates in the final analysis,
treating each contestant as an individual patient and respecting his
or her right to confidentiality by not divulging privileged
information to the rest of the house.
But if language forms the limits of our world, and therefore what
we can ever hope to think or do inside the house, what happens
at the endof the game? Quite obviously getting to the end is the
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ultimate object of the game. In which case the object would
appear to be to outlast the terms of the game, or to beat Big
Brother at its own game. In this case we may have good reason to
assume that there is indeed life beyond Big Brother, or at least
that there exists another world outside the house. But if
Wittgenstein is right then how could there possibly be anything
beyond? The beyond, that assumedly mystical realm outside
all common sense and understanding, is still within our linguistic
powers to define, and so must still form part of our world. In
other words, there is no getting out of the house, even for the
winner.
Consider the following example. The film Cube (1997) tells the
story of six total strangers who one day find themselves quiteinexplicably locked inside a giant metal cube. The cube is
composed of a finite number of smaller, symmetrical cubes, each
one connected to the next on each of its six sides by
interconnecting passageways. No one can recall how s/he got
there. The point of the game, given the fact that everyone wants
to escape, is to find the cube that leads to the outside, doing
everything and anything in their combined powers to achieve this
end. There must be a world outside, or at least it must be possible
within the rules of the game (which emerge during the course
of the game itself) for at least one of them to find a way out.
Ultimately, however, this theory turns out to have been a total
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delusion. At the very end of the film it emerges, for the winner,
that the reality that was assumed to exist on the outside of the
cube in actual fact doesnt. Whether it was permanently lost in
the interim or never really existed in the first place is left unclear.
However, what it confirms is what (at least one of) the players
suspected all along: namely, there is no way out.
Are we destined to remain inside the house forever? We already
know that playing the game is the best possible option, even if we
remain convinced that we wont win, or if we dont particularly
care who wins. But it now seems as though Big Brother has been
playing a much more devious game than it appeared to be at first.
Playing the game just for the sake of it i.e. without any
pretensions of actually winning is one thing. But playing thegame forever is quite another. As contestants we assumed there
would be an end to all this. Now we learn that when we
eventually depart the house we are still effectively in it. But
how do we know this for sure? Obviously it remains largely a
suspicion until were actuallyout there, but there are plenty of
clues that would appear to confirm it in the meantime. For
example, Big Brother quite obviously isnt playing in thespiritof
the game. Granted, it changes the rules from time to time, which
it justifies by saying that since they are Big Brothers rules it is
entitled to alter them. The only problem is it doesnt appear to be
following them. For example, allowing evicted housemates to
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reenter the house is quite clearly a breach of its own rules. It
would therefore appear that there are two sets of rules in
operation here: the ones Big Brother intends on the one hand, and
those it chooses not to observe on the other.
If there are certain rules for some and certain rules for the rest
then it doesnt bode well for life on the outside. What is to
prevent Big Brother from making us play another game once we
leave, from putting us into another house with a bunch of even
more contemptible halfwits? We may have entered into a contract
with Big Brother stipulating our contractual obligations and
frivolously signing away our civil rights. But that was only on the
understanding that once we get out of here we were more or less
guaranteed to reap the rewards of our hard-won celebrity. For allwe know Big Brother is quite capable of disregarding that
contract completely, in which case we wont ever be able to
escape the dreaded couch.
Then again, perhaps there is another possibility. Is it not possible
that Big Brother, in its infinite wisdom, might see fit to bring the
whole world to an end? Not just the game, but all future games?
Is it not conceivable that Big Brother could set us free not just by
making the rules of the game null and void, but by making itself
null and void as well? Perhaps we can imagine a time when Big
Brother is finally put beyond a joke, a point at which it no longer
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defines the rules of the game, any game, owing to the complete
non-existence of anything resembling a coherent language. Such
a point would amount to a kind of media and cultural desert
where the game really would be point-less, not so much for lack
of players, but for lack of viewers. The problem with this
proposition, however, is that in imagining such a world it is
difficult to see how anything else could exist in its place,
including ourselves. As we have noted already, Big Brother
doesnt infringe upon our personalities, it reveals them in us. By
making us feel like the objects of its all-seeing eye it confronts us
with those impressions of ourselves which tell us more than we
already knew. Furthermore, Big Brother is concealed behind all
the mirrors in the house that constantly display our image to all
and sundry, even behind our backs. There is no getting away fromit (them). Break all the mirrors and we ourselves break into pieces
as well; without the specular images that the media provide we
would cease to exist.
In light of all this it would appear that we are the game. We
havent been forced into this and were not being kept in here
against our will so to suggest that Big Brother is preventing us
from leaving is to ignore the very conditions under which we
originally entered the house. We have to be reasonable. It is us
who help to set the conditions under which we play the game. It
might not seem that way at times, but think of it this way: if we
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dont take responsibility for our own behaviour then why should
Big Brother? Dont we only have ourselves to blame if we choose
to behave like a bunch of caged monkeys and Big Brother
responds by adapting the rules of the game? Granted, Big Brother
may be trying deliberately to provoke us into such puerile
displays in order to justify imposing unduly punitive measures on
the house. But why should we help morally to justify this kind of
exploitation by reinforcing our own stereotypes in the eyes of the
world?
We respect Big Brother because it and its game are the very
reason for our being here. We cant think or do without the
attention. But by the same token Big Brother is not God. We
might respect it, but we dont have to believe in it. Big Brotherhas shown its willingness to try our patience and act in bad faith.
Consequently we dont put our faith in it. How could a two-faced
despot command our blind devotion? Given that there could
never be any proof of what lies beyond the house we remain
agnostic about what will happen to us once we actually walk out
of here. No one leaves and comes back in to tell the tale, although
some do have a sort of near death experience whereby they
appear to leave the house but in reality dont. Rumour has it there
are others who, having left the house, come to inhabit a
netherworld, a world of the living-dead, a place which isnt quite
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in the house and isnt quite outside it either. But we tend to treat
such stories with a healthy dose of skepticism.
What would appear to be beyond dispute is that the winner is not
the only one who gets out of here. In that sense we are all
winners. In fact, never mind getting out, simply managing to get
in here must qualify us for some sort of prize. Perhaps we have
already achieved the object of the game without even knowing it.
Then again there may well be another possibility: namely, that if
the game doesnt necessarily begin when we think it does then
how can we be sure that the game has even yet begun? And how
could we everbe sure? Perhaps the game is about trying to find
out what the game is about, or whether the game really exists. Or
whether in a world like this the idea of a real game makes anysense at all.
3. True Faith
We live at the time of the Roman Empire. It is a time of great
tyranny and persecution, not least of our own community.
Somewhere over the horizon the Empire wages its wars whilst
here, in our own land, it rules by imposing its laws and foreign
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customs. Power corrupts absolutely: not only is the Empires
belligerent takeover of culture and society unjust but there are
even those among us who seek to profit from the occupation.
Such are the hypocritical Pharisees who claim to be enlightened
men but in actual fact are only interested in their own material
gain. With their pious double standards they are all show. They
are no good collaborators who worship false gods: money,
glamour and fame.
In this world there are two types of (pseudo-)thinkers or would-be
theorists: hypocrites, of whom we have already mentioned, and
experts. Let us consider each of them in turn.
The hypocrite, we have said, is a careful manipulator of his ownimage, giving the outwardimpression that he is a pious man
when in fact he is a ruthless social climber. Everything he does is
geared towards convincing other people that he is something he is
not. But arent we all hypocrites when it comes down to it?
Arent we all guilty of trying to pass ourselves off as model
citizens, people who the rest of the community should look up to
and aspire to be like? Surely society needs role models, in which
case the hypocrite, for all his faults, is merely filling the gap in
the market? Not quite. Admittedly we must resist the temptation
to criticize the hypocrite under false pretences. We must be wary
not to allow our sense of anger and resentment toward him to be
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transformed into jealousy, or of sounding like spurned hypocrites,
for that really would be the height of hypocrisy. On the other
hand we are quite right to condemn the hypocrites position, for
this is someone who in occupying it partakes of its privileges
through perpetuating the myth, not merely of his own identity,
but of the position itself.
The hypocrite is a civil servant or public relations man. His job
is to serve the wider interests of the community and so he sets
himself up as the official spokesperson or medium between us,
the people, and God, or what we might call thespiritof the
community. The hypocrite glories in this role. However, since he
has no genuine belief in the community that he represents, the
interests in question remain completely beyond his sphere ofinfluence or understanding. The hypocrite is a professional
communicatorwho aims to convince us that he is providing a
great service and putting on a great show but ultimately his own
vanity is all he manages to promote. He wrestles with signs and
spends ages trying to predict the public mood and exploit existing
trends, or at least to be the first on the scene as soon as a miracle
is reported; all the better, no doubt, to tell us what it all means.
The hypocrite is an obsessive socio-cultural commentator
effectively divorced from the rest of the community for whom the
sanctimonious waffle of a self-righteous man will always fall on
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deaf ears, especially for those true believers that have already
seen the light.
In reality the hypocrite does the community a dreadful disservice.
This is a time crying out for answers. In view of the endless
degradation of our culture and ideas by the occupying power, and
of our civic leaders and cultural ambassadors repeatedly selling
out to their imperial paymasters, the question we must devote
ourselves to is this: how can we best serve the wider interests of
the community? How can we rediscover through our work the
true spirit of our age whilst standing firm against the hypocrites
of this world?
This brings us to the expert, whose primary concern is with theintellectual part of her practice, regardless of whether the
intelligence in question is scientific or artistic in nature. The
expert doesnt speak on behalf of any community and so avoids
leaving herself open to bribery and corruption. Unlike the
hypocrite she doesnt draw a veil over her own ignorance since
true knowledge isnt hers to possess. The expert works on behalf
of truth. Her task is to be its custodian, the person placed between
it and us. But doesnt this custodianship resemble all too closely
the role of the hypocrite in the way he claims to work in the wider
interests of the community? The key difference between the
hypocrite and the expert is that while the hypocrite indulges in all
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sorts of obscurantism the expert aims for the consistent exposition
of truth. The hypocrite makes a great show of his own wisdom
in public while simultaneously working behind the scenes to deny
its potential benefits to the rest of us; he isnt so much a
defender of the faith as he is its paid mercenary. By complete
contrast the experts overriding concern is with weeding out such
(pseudo-)mysticism and the superstitions that cling to pure
thought. The expert is an experimenter and a producer of
concepts. Whether or not this demands a modicum of faith is
perhaps debatable, although what is undeniable is that expertise is
always more than a mere matter of faith.
Striving for truth demands an intellectual discipline on the part of
the artist or scientist that has nothing to do with publicexhibitions, promotions or manifestos. Whether or not the truth
actually emerges in the process is not a cause for debate. Indeed,
the whole point of the process is to eliminate all debate from the
intellectuals mind, to create a blank canvass where creation can
begin, not exactly from nothing, but under experimental
conditions purged of all interference from third parties. Art and
science are both disciplines that the expert follows to the letter.
These, then, are the two types of theorists in our world. Both
claim to hold the monopoly on truth. For us, however, theory
must follow an altogether different path. For although the
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hypocrite and the expert are strongly divided in theory, they face
exactly the same problem in practice: namely, they both work for
the Empire. He who imagines the world in which he works and
the world in which he thinks to be separate realms is only
deluding himself. It is vain nonsense to believe that one can work
for the spirit of the community or greater good without serving
the interests of Empire. This is the great evil of Empire: instead of
ruling by mere force of arms it introduces conflict into the
community which then proceeds to spread like the plague. The
people become their own worst enemies, fighting between
themselves, brother against brother, in an effort to win favour
with the real enemy. Then, from the midst of conflict, the
hypocrite arrives on the scene.
Having found favour as a spiritual medium a power broker
masquerading as a wise man capable of healing the wounds of
hatred and resentment the hypocrite turns our attention away
from what is really happening on the ground and claims to be in
touch with a higher reality: Behold! he declares, I have been
given a sign. The hypocrite claims to be Gods own messenger,
the only one capable of interpreting the word of God. He claims
to have had a dream, and that all we need do to make it a reality is
to take heed of what he says and follow his example. The dream
is a metaphor. In other words, we arent meant to take it literally.
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However, if we manage to get the message then we too can make
it to the Promised Land; we can make heaven a place on earth.
The hypocrite is a semiotician. What is semiotics? Semiotics is
the science of signs and their meanings. According to this
science, language can be studied as a system. In order to
understand how and why language operates we first need to
distinguish speech, or the spoken words of individuals, from the
standard language itself. In more technical terms this is often
referred to as the distinction between la parole (speech) and la
langue (the language-system). In order to express oneself through
speech there must first be a language to govern what it is possible
to say. Clearly speech must conform to the rules of language. But
this is not a question of memorizing the meaning of individualwords (often referred to as acquiring a vocabulary). It is a
question of recognizing the differences between signs.
For the semiotician the entire language-system is made up of
signs. Furthermore, each sign is composed of two related aspects.
Take the sign cat. On the one hand it is asignifier, a word that
signifies or indicates a meaning distinct from itself. There is no
natural link between the animal in question and the word that
stands for it; or at least one might imagine another word having
been used in its place (indeed, the French language has chat, the
GermanKatze, and even English has moggy). Therefore the
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relation between the signifier and the thing in question is said to
be arbitrary. In other words a signifier signifies the thing by
means of cultural association. This is its signified meaning.
For the semiotician difference is the key term. Language is a
system of differences without positive content. This doesnt
simply mean that each signifier is distinct from every other one,
although this is clearly the case. Its more important implication is
that cat gains its meaning by virtue of its difference from bat
rather than from any natural association the word might have with
the small feline mammal itself. Cat means a cat because it is
notbat; and so too with car and bar; bike and pike,
and so on. Language is nothing without positive content
without difference. Imagine a huge net: its holes are there byvirtue of the gaps in-between. Each hole is meaningful because
it is kept in place by the next one, which is kept in place by the
next, which is kept in place by the next, and so on. These
differences or holes extend right down to the level of phonemes,
which are the basic building blocks of our language. We might
say that the holes in language make up the system of language as
a whole.
The signifier cat is composed of three phonemic sounds: /c/, /a/
and /t/. Replace the /c/ sound with a /b/ sound and one has bat
instead of cat. Linguistically speaking this really is the only
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difference between them. Not only that but since language and
not the individuals who use it generates meaning the only
meaning of cat that makes sense to us is the one that differs
from bat. Not only is our individual expression ruled by
language (for there is nothing we could say that language doesnt
allow us to), language makes it meaningless. Unless we follow
the rules, unless we conform to the system of language, then we
have no place to speak at all. In other words, break the rules and
the semiotician, this hypocrite priest, will accuse us of speaking
in tongues.
The semiotician is therefore the man of holy language, for whom
reality is wholly language. He sees his role as one of putting the
community back in touch with reality, his reality, which he doesby excluding anything which doesnt make sense or appears to be
in danger of falling through the holes (but isnt this rather
difficult?). The problem, however, is that since we live in an
Empire of signs things are forced to make sense. We, the people,
are quite literally given no say in the matter. The imperial culture
and media are alien to us, produced by hypocrites, those bogus
men of faith, for an ideal community that only exists in their
imagination. Their television programmes might make sense to
them when theyre being made but as far as were concerned they
might as well be in different language. In which case the
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hypocrite represents the true meaning of the word: namely, he
who says one thing and means something entirely different.
But what about the expert? Does she avoid partaking of this type
of hypocrisy? To begin with the expert is not a great
communicator. Scientists and especially artists are not renowned
for their ability to get their message over to the public, to put their
understanding into words. They work largely in isolation, which
means that it gets left up to us to interpret their works in whatever
way we see fit. Artists dont have great faith in the system (of
language). Nevertheless, despite her intimate expertise ultimately
she too is a hypocrite, for in cutting herself off from the rest of
the community she merely invites misunderstanding and
misrepresentation. Of course, the artist stands by her work, shewill always defend its right to exist. But in leaving it up to us to
determine its significance she might as well deny that she had any
hand in actually producing it. Creative competence then becomes
creative genius; she ends up giving us the impression that shes a
miracle worker, or at least an exceptional talent, in touch with
strange forces and unknown powers that the rest of us cant hope
to understand. But lets not pretend. We know exactly what these
forces are. They are the forces of Empire. As for the expert she
is nothing but an extreme hypocrite.
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We have said already that we must find our way as theorists
between these two extremes. How can we manage it?By refusing
to work for the Empire. Let us not delude ourselves as to the real
meaning of this word which is also The Word. Empire insists on
the wisdom of words. Communication, it would have us believe,
is the lifeblood of every community, seemingly so important as to
make little difference whatwe say so long as we keep on trying to
get the message through. What we end up with is so-called mass
communication in which the clamour to be heard is positively
encouraged despite the fact in trying to say something new we
merely end up repeating ourselves. All this suits our imperial
masters perfectly well, for it leads to the misapprehension that
Empire is a practical necessity for achieving the same ends, i.e.
communication, when in fact it has become the very means forfrustrating the possibility of any greater good; any positive
content. Empire perpetuates the lie that everyone is a born
communicator and a natural producer. The work we do is justified
on the grounds that we are laying the foundations for future
civilizations, when in actual fact all we are doing is shoring up
the shaky legitimacy of Empire. In the process of reproducing this
legitimacy, work becomes a metaphor for life: namely, there is no
practical alternative to earning a living, to setting an example
through the quality and integrity of ones work, for producing
works that can stand the test of time and that mean something
(that are timeless). The result of this is that the question of
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theory becomes deferred until the afterlife, to a time of post-
production (which is meaningless) and of reflection (which is
self-indulgent). The overall impression of theory is therefore one
of spiritual decay and imperial decline, which of course must be
resisted at all costs.
But what alternative is there to practice and work? There is none.
One should never think of theory as an alternative. We have
already seen how alternative theories misrepresent the true
nature of theory. The theorists task is not to debate the pros and
cons of his discipline. He is not out tojustify theory. But surely
his task is to promote it? Certainly not, for to do so would require
the communication that so misrepresents theory and makes its
theorists out to be hypocrites. Nor should the theorist placerestrictions on who can do theory based on some arbitrary
classification of theorists and practitioners. Rather than
safeguarding the integrity of theory this would only succeed in
turning theory into a second rate or inferior form of practice, a
minority theory separated from real work by virtue of it being
surplus to requirements. This is the mistake made repeatedly by
self-styled avant-garde artists who convince themselves that
their conceptual experiments are too intellectually demanding for
the mainstream. They are painfully misguided. The art world is in
the business of overturning conservatism; this is what it does.
Rather than lamenting its own minority status the avant-garde
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would be well advised to stop whining and find itself a better
agent.
It must be clear by now that what passes for wisdom in this world
is nothing of the kind, and is in no position to define the uses one
can make of theory. How could an Empire that itself has no use
for theory, that only values people inasmuch as they produce, and
condemns the rest of us to a life of passive consumption, make an
informed judgement as to the role and extent of theory in society
anyway? This brings us to the crux of the matter. The antagonism
that supposedly exists between theory and practice is a lie put
about by Empire in an effort to prevent the community from
realizing the true rewards of theory. What can the theorists do
about this? In terms of taking on Empire, nothing whatsoever. Inany case the Empire is not the true enemy, for if it were this
would prevent us from ever embracing its supporters as partners
in theory. The enemy is our own ignorance of theory, which
assumes the dual guise of the hypocrite and the expert, both of
whom will theory for the sake of their own material gain. In terms
of addressing this ignorance the task before us is to combat the
hypocrisy and expertise at work in our own understanding of
theory. How might we do this?
The answer comes in the form of intellectual emancipation. This
is not about elevating our minds to the level of philosophers but
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of bringing theory down from its ivory tower to our level,
whatever our level might be. There is certainly no preexisting
standard of intellectual attainment in theory. The idea of a
lowering or a drop in standards as is often said of students failing
to pass an examination, or of the dumbing down of a school
syllabus, has nothing whatsoever to do with being a good theorist.
We resist categorically this type of intellectual snobbery and old
school elitism where theory is concerned, which in any case is not
a bar we have to hurdle in order to make the grade. Equally we
must not venerate the theorist himself, treating him like a genius
whose intelligence can rub off on us if we adopt his style of
thinking. If anything we should even mistrust what the theorist
says for theorys sake, for theory is not something one ever takes
complete possession of. Each of us must instead set out to thinkto the best of his or her ability. However, one thing is certain:
there are no specialists in theory, no theory worthy of the name
that can resist the demands of non-expert thinkers, for the
freedom of theory is the freedom from intellectual domination
and the masters of theory. Theory is an exercise in equality.
Nothing and no one are excluded from it.
The task of theory is to bring about a world that is equal to its
understanding. This might sound a bit like going round in circles;
then again, instead of thinking theory in opposition to practice the
point is to extendtheory into areas otherwise reserved for
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practice. The prohibition on theorists from becoming involved in
technical or pure practice highlights the self-imposed ignorance
of practitioners not only in theory but in terms of their own
practice. Crucially, the ignorance isself-imposedwhich means
that although the Empire profits from the imaginary division of
theory and practice the practitioner is the one responsible for
actually implementing it orputtingit into practice. But couldnt
the same be said of our own theory? Dont we as theorists share
the blame for this division since without theory it would be
unthinkable? Yes. Practitioners may be responsible for
misunderstandings in their own discipline but they are certainly
not responsible for misunderstandings in theory. With this in
mind we must begin to take responsibility for preaching the
virtues of theory rather than victimising or criticising practitionersfor mistakes which have as much to do with us as they have to do
with them. In effect the practitioner is simply a theorist who
has yet to understand the relevance of his own discipline for
theory. He is the one who practices in the dark. The theorist must
lead him into the light.
The Noisetheorynoise conference held at Middlesex University,
UK in March 2004 draws attention to the imaginary division of
labour between theory and practice. Shannon and Weaver, whose
information theory provides the historical basis for media and
communication studies, define noise as a distortion of meaning,
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or any signal not intended by an information source on its journey
from transmitter to receiver. The static interference on a
telephone line is the classic example of such noise. However, for
the organizers of this conference noise is not simply a practical
problem to be ironed out by technical support staff. For example,
in relation to music, noise is not non-music. Instead, Noise is
an unmapped continent in comparison with which everything we
recognize as music remains a parochial backwater. Ordinarily
the theorists task is to define the bounds of good taste in music,
whilst the practitioner concentrates on making music that meets
with these conventions (of pitch, chord progression, tonal scale,
etc.). However, we could argue that this adds very little to our
appreciation of either music or noise, and simply defends the
status quo in music from which Empire profits. On the otherhand, if theory were to rethink the bounds of good taste in music
to include rather than exclude noise, it is possible that our
appreciation of music could not only be enhanced, but also
theoretically transformed. For example, noise might suddenly
yield new time signatures and new rhythms; it might lead to a
reassessment of the physical limitations of the human voice, or to
the redefinition of the type of sounds it can make. It may even
lead to a new cerebral type of music that isnt a product of
musical instruments so much as a redefinition of sound itself.
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The classical composer John Cage is the most well known
experimenter in the limits of sound. His most (in)famous work,
entitled 4'33", is a silent piece in which no actual music is
performed for a duration of four minutes and thirty-three seconds.
Isnt this just a facetious intellectual joke? How could such
music ever be composed? Isnt it ridiculous to gather an
orchestra together on stage simply in ordernotto make music?
Perhaps the answers to these questions (which are open questions,
and raise many more questions than we can provide answers to
here) depend on the type of expectations we have about how
music should be performed, and what we expect to hear when it
is, rather than on the possibility of listening to non-music. Must
every musical work be performed? Is live performance always the
criterion of real music? Clearly electronic music, composed andpre-recorded entirely on synthesizers, involves minimal input
from human beings, at least when performed on stage. And
there are many sounds in our environment including undefined
background noise that involve melodies of sorts, even if they
arent actually composed. Might not the rejection of John Cages
work result from narrow-minded, anti-theoretical assumptions
about what music is and how it stands in relation to noise?
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