PAIĆ, Žarko
Žarko Paić, born in 1958, studied political science and graduated from the Faculty of Political Sciences in Zagreb. He earned his Master's Degree in contemporary philosophical anthropology at the same faculty. He is a poet, essayist, critic and author. He has published two collections of poetry, Aura and Evil Summer, and three books of essays, Pendulum at the End ofthe Centurj: Twilight ofthe European Mind A.D. 1992, Post-modern Play ofthe World and Gothic Cross.
Žarko Paić, rodjen 1958. godine, diplomirao študij politologije na Fakultetu političkih znanosti u Zagrebu, a na istom je Fakultetu magistrirao iz područja suvremene filozofijske antropologije. Pjesnik, esejist, kritičar i prozaik. Objavio je knjige eseja Njihalo na kraju stolječa: sumrak evropskog uma A.D. 1992, Postmoderna igra svijeta, Gotski križ i Idoli, nakaze i suze, te knjige pjesama Aura i Opako Ijeto.
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Sacrificial Altar of the New Moloch
In the Dictionarj of Sjmbols, by Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, the god Moloch is called king, according to the heritage of the Semitic languages. This is a deity that was respected by the people of Moab, Canaan, Tyre and Carthage and was often confused with Baal. "This cruel cult is associated with the myth of Kronus, who devoured his own children, and with the victims of the Incan gods. Moloch is undoubtedly the ancient image of a tyrant, a jealous, vengeful and merciless deity who demands from his subjects submissiveness, even their blood, and takes away ali their worldly possessions, even their children who are sacrificed in wars or on the sacrificial altar." During the dawn of civilisation and, if we are to believe the doomsayers of the Western world, also at the tirne of the post-historical ruins, the name of the cruel deity was the symbol of the rule of evil in the cyclical adventure of the human universe. The myth of a deity wKd devours his own descendants to preserve his superhuman power, holding the world in a state of primordial submissiveness - groundless and monstrously horrible - is certainly not a mere story about the exile of historical nations and their evil destiny after the downfall of the golden age. As a freak of eternity, Moloch submits neither to tirne nor to historv, but only to his own law which professes that painful mystery of "gods, kings and prophets," namely that evil is that ineradicable tree of knowledge of the eternal human renewal and his craving for limitless power. Are we not, after ali, the contemporary witnesses of an interplay of the ages, which we do not even know how to label with a positive understanding, but only refer to it as the state after, where the "post" becomes a unique instruction to leave for the "Babylonian madhouse" (R. Musil), where insanity is replaced by a system
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of madness, and Orpheus' song is replaced by the simulacrum of the "assem-bly lines" of progress? And the only certainty is that the return into the caves of the unfinished, troubled and sombre past perfectly coincides with the refined nostalgia for barbarism. Just as at the end ofthe Middle Ages - as was authoritatively pointed out by Johan Huizinga in his Jesen srednjeg vijeka (The Autumn of the Middle Ages) - a sad play, a ritual of destruction, specta-cles of violence, predictions of destruction, the mystery of death and the theory of chaos, ali convincingly approach the offering of a dramatic play of serene and joyful utopias of eternal bliss on the world stage of ideas. It will be said: "In the age when war is the measure of ali things, only naive mandarins see the future as the image of earthly paradise." And so, quite absurdly, at the end of the 20th century, when the true metaphor of the špirit of the times becomes the cultic magic circle ofthe sacrificial altar ofthe neiv Moloch, while his imaginary figures are the nameless undertakers from the tragedy about a young Danish prince, there exists only one great Utopia - the one about the end ofhistory. The fact that no one seriously believes its ideas - except for the philosopher who renovated and produced it for the third tirne in the wake of Hegel and Mane, in the form ofthe "great story," - perhaps provides sufficient reason for one preliminary assumption. When ideologies are dead or traves-tied, ideas come alive in a threefold form: as direetion signs of a utopian, eternal salvation; as new ideologies in the ugly union of the "snake's slough" and the eentaurian grotesque, and finally, as the "third tirne" in uuhich the philosophy andlor the artistic play oflove and hate gathers the fragments of historical epoehs, ranging from the figures of cruelty to the allegory of post-metaphysical serenity ofthe ivorld. This trinity ofthe phenomenal existence of ideas in fact by no means represents a kind of entrenehed model of thinking patterned on the outcast "dialeetical" heritage of the speculative mind, which always knoeks three times on the locked metaphysical door in order to open it like a thief or a wizard with a secret code. I am merely talking about an attempt to deseribe the spiritual situation of the period following the realisa-tion that the twilight of ideologies does not begin with the downfalI of commu-nism - that perfect utopia/ideology ofthe end ofhistory as the rule of eternal terror ivithout the sublime character. At that moment begins the insane search for new doubles, who will restore to the "last man" - sick of rebellions and fearful of the desolation of ineffable freedom - the recenth/ lost kingdom of idols. Because the "new world" and the "new age" need a safe sanctuary, a mythological and/or scientific justification of love and adoration of "my" na-tion, race, culture, and the reasons for hatred and cruelty towards the "other."
Subjects ofthe Golden Age
The idea about the end of history is not an apocalyptic vision that appeared at the end of the eold war between the West and the East. In fact, at the end of
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the 1950's, the American sociologist, Daniel Bell, declared - without any particular prophetic zeal - the end ofideologj. It was thus only a question of tirne before the neo-conservative concept of society, politics and culture, with the eternal rule of liberal democracy as its key category, would declare com-plete victory. It is self-evident that the end of ideology at the same tirne also presupposes a restraint on the utopian construction of new towers of Babel. Thus it is precisely this project of the end of historj, as a liberal-democratic utopia, that is, by its fundamental intention, a paradoxical goal. This is because its true beginning is marked by the victory over the rival ideology following the long struggle for the world division of power. The utopia of the end of historj thus emerges after the death of one ideology, which fuses the blind faith in modernism and progress with the teleological/eschatological vision of the world. There is, however, a fundamental difference between the three "great stories" about the end of history: Only the second one - the one told by Mane about communism - fulfills ali the conditions for a classical utopia, starting with the millenaristic visions of Joachim di Fiore, Thomas More and the social-utopian working and living experiments in communes and camps. This utopia, in fact, considered the space and time of the salvation of humanity as the ecstasy of the future, as a global community of complete equals. The first and the third stories lack this ingredient. This is because they formally point out that the idea of space expands from a single centre towards the external environment. As is well known, Hegel speaks about the state, as a manifestation of the absolute on earth, through the reality of the Prussian monarchy, while Fukuyama goes as far as to plače liberal democracy at the centre of the "new world order" in the image of America, the kingdom of freedom and modernity, and the last global superpower. However, both of them plače the moment of aetualisation of the idea in the present time. The end of historj comes to an end in the play of recognising individual and international vanities, the will for power which elevates itself from the classical wars for territory (pre-modern nations and "tribes") - in the existential-spiritual sense - to a higher level, i.e., the struggle for supremacy in the world market of technology and capital. Ali three "great stories" are characterised by something terrible, while the masters of utopian fantasies are normally not expected to display arrogance and cynicism. What am I talking about? Only about that fateful illness which distinguishes a decadent from a sceptic and a barbarian in the image of the aristocratic philosopher of the end of historj; about the contempt of, and complacency towards, the "small," "weak" and "non-historical" nations. If we attribute this idea to Hegel, then its general prevalence in the politics and culture of the 19th century in Europe, in the West as well as in the East, comes from the ossified strueture of thinking in the age of positivism and mechanical contraptions. The consequence of this attitude to the world was - although not a necessary one - the emergence of racism and imperialism of the Victorian brand, as it related to the enslavement
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of the Third World. The myth of a race of the high and mighty warriors and masters and their natural right to "ethnically cleanse" the world of inferior nations and races is only the legitimate continuation of the same way of thinking, using different means. Even for Marx and Engels, the "srnah nations" of Europe were "counter-revolutionary" because, in the wake of Euro-pean modernity, they claimed something that was in itself obsolete and was overlooked from the standpoint of scientific ideology of the end ofhistorj, i.e., nationhood as a guarantee of social, cultural and, ultimately, biological sur-vival. Fukuyama as well is not immune to the extension of the life of this contagious virus which has been pervading for two whole centuries the ac-cepted philosophy of politics. Just as the Croatians, for example, "got on the nerves" of Marxists in the middle of the past century - as was pointed out in one of the songs by the Croatian poet Boris Maruna - to Fukuyama as well, this nation - having been dispatched to the insanity of historv-serves as proof that it does not belong to the selected subjects ofthe golden age. As far as the utopia ofthe end ofhistory is concerned, there is no compassion towards the sacrificial games of the "little" nations in the "civil war in Yugoslavia." There is only indifference and a diagnostic analysis of the disease for which there is no cure, except universal liberal democracy, cosmopolitanism and the denied dream of a cultural justification of a nation. Is this then the final word ofthe utopia ofthe end of historj? This is certainh/ nothing else but the same old story about the golden age of reconciling the idea with reality in the realistic world of boredom and melancholy which that old cynic Hegel, certainly aware of the reach of his own ideas, denounced as the paradise of equality- as the "ideal zoo." If communism - as a utopian system of ideas, and as an ideology of metaphysical justification of the rule of evil in the world history - is in fact dead, what are we to do with universal liberal democracy, if the end of historj necessarih/ presupposes also the end of utopia1? Can "the last man" live without utopia? Where is his real habitation? Is it perhaps in the empire of "world democracy," which passionately scorns aH great sceptics and decadents of civilisations (from Nietzsche to Cioran), not because they adore monarchies, dictatorships or despotic regimes, but because aH that is left behind is pure uniformity, equality without differences - the click & clock, as Orson Wells put it so aptly in his cult film The Third Man, comparing the result of many centuries of democracy of Switzerland, for example, with the sublime beauty of art produced during the bloody tyranny of Cesare Borgia?
The Return of Ideologies: From the "Snake's Slough" to the "Centaurian Grotesque"
AH post-ideological discourses at the turn ofthe 20th century tacitly acknowl-edge 1989 as the year of their emergence and the year of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. However, it is largely overlooked that this century
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has also known one undoubtedly great ideology which was defeated in 1945. Of course, I am referring to fascism, or more precisely, to German national socialism. What is the link between Leviathan and Behemothl Similarities and essential differences between two "close relatives" begin where their apparently impossible union emerges. The fact that, during the "cold war," a renewal of the fascist conception of the world, openly demanding the quest for the myth of the race/nation in the Eastern European communist countries did not manifest itself, does not mean that its foundations had been uprooted, but rather, that communism, as an ideology, intended to become the supreme and only book of the end ofhistorj. The similarity was rejected already in the early 1930's, and was perhaps enlightened with the greatest insight by Heidegger's ideas from the time of The Era of the Image of the World. Here, national socialism, communism as well as Americanism have been proclaimed the heirs of modernity and technology who do not grant man the purity of battle and the dignitj ofeternal freedom. That same thing in the planetary advance-ment of communism and fascism is nevertheless something much simpler and, for this very reason, so much more monstrous. The desire to produce reality straight from an idea. Ideology is from this point on only a subsequent system of beliefs, doctrines, rules and norms needed to achieve the goal - the creation of a new order which, according to its own understanding of the "era of the image of the world," needs a "new man." German nazism and soviet/ Russian communism, for the purpose of their own ideology, embodied the projections of the state as an organic part of the cultural policies and its leaders as eternal, "divine" entities.
This relationship can certainh/ be recognised in its extreme form in art, which has always been in part imaginary and sublime and in part insubordi-nate freedom in the world of life. The image of the superman in the conscious-ness of nazism or the image of the "new man" of the soviet type is nothing else but the actualisation of the phantasm about the unity of art and life. It is an idea with which the avant-garde embarked on its avenging struggle against democracy and beauty of the classical era of humanism. Where nazi-art - as a movement of the renewal of the myrhology-like, heroic past of the Germans -tried to chop off aH that was avant-garde, modem and labelled "deformed," with a sword like the Obsidian Head, communism, on the other hand, pre-sented only its "virginal clothing," even though the avant-garde offered to communism the aesthetic foundations and metaphysical justification of the destruction of the future. In its second phase of open totahtarianism, world terror and the gulag, this ornament became a "crime". The most appropriate example is Malievich's suprematism. The black square perfectly mirrored the abstract collectivism of the order, its methods of evil and its dehumanisation. On the other hand , the monumental sculpture of Arno Braker had to clearly depict the greatness and beauty of the German superman as the new classi-cism of the natural shapes of the human body However, what emerges in the
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centre from the combination of two opposite ideologies of 20th century totali-tarianism is the aesthetisation of politics as a means of actualising the nazi and communist ideologies in the form of mass spectacles. This attempt at replacing the deathlv masked bali in the former, and the serenitv of life in the latter ideologv, with the pseudo-aesthetic heroic life, continues to fascinate with its mystique even today. Because by directing the resurrection of the fury of the medieval obsession with the iconosophy of death and victim, it theatri-cally reveals the world in which the sacrificial altar ofthe new Moloch calls for war and mass killings. In this world, how can one avoid the idolatry if every ideology in its very root already celebrates the total campaign of "its own" nation to occupy the vacated spot in the universal game of ideas? It is evident that it is only after the fall of communism that there emerges the post-ideological void which should be filled with a content that is at least as convincing and universal as was communism. "The snake's slough" ideology thus does not have much of an alternative solution.
Nationalism, racism, fundamentalism are certainly becoming specific ideologies of the European East, combining the elements of the two previously described universal concepts and movements. But their scope has always been essentially defined by the size (not spiritual, of course) of the nation and its claims towards other national territories and nations. Nationalism as a pseudo-ideology is the child of neither communism nor fascism. It is older than the two, because it emerged at the tirne of the birth of the European nation states in the mid-19th century. Nationalism, even at the turn ofthe 20th centurv, from the initial "regulative" and, in principle, positive affirmation of the position of "small" European nations, is turning into the main danger for the meta-national structure of Europe. This is obvious not only in the ongoing war on the territory of the former Yugoslavia to create the ethnically pure state of "Greater Serbia," but also in the čase of restoration of the Russian empire in the geopolitical assumptions of Zhirinovsky regarding the war in Chechnya. The age of changing of the communist "snake's slough" does not start and does not end with the deadening and enthronement of the myth of the historical right of a nation to territory in that golden age when the wizards, dragons and knights errant pillaged and plundered throughout the oneiric map ofthe Great Earth. Such a period is always transitional and, in its inner being, apocalyptic because it lives on the promise of the coming of the "new age." For this reason in this čase as well the ideologies that replaced communism and fascism tap their utopian impetus from the Armageddon-like strategies of religion. The end of historj will be achieved when a nation, through its spiritual "purification" and "renevval," achieves perfect harmony with the past, when the evil spirits of modernity disappear, while the state proclaims eternal life to its subjects. The nationalist myth about the end of history is nothing but yet another version of those three "great stories" that considers the dying world not as the twilight of civilisation, but rather, as a
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"new beginning." This is the moment of the last act of transformation of ideologies, when in a unique centaurian grotesque we witness the passing of ostensibly incompatible elements. Who could ever imagine that neo-fascism would adopt a "human face?" Or that in that very same face one would recognise the devil's neo-communistic tail attached to the spectre of new ideologies which today rule over Eastern Europe? But the West is not innocent in this "post-modernist circus." Its indifference, cynicism and boredom while observing the cruelty carry the classical syndrome of voyeurism, that un-heard-of nostalgia for barbarism, which cannot replace the feeling that in this world of total theatre there is no mercy for the victims. It is better to leave them die, like "tired dogs," without the hope that the shame of this spiritual process will survive the epoch of post-modern image of the world as a telematic vision of infiniteh/ multiplied evil.
Figures of Cruelty, Allegories of Serenity
"The "third tirne" of the other side of eternal imagining of new utopias and ideologies - when there are no more great philosophical gigantomachies or systems of ideas such as existentialism, structuralism, hermeneutics - is by no means identical to the ideologies of the "third time" among which the meta-politics of the new political right defines the direction of historical regression. We called it "technical" with this notion, but it, understood in the broad sense, embraces different attempts of philosophical and/or artistic play of love and hate in the accumulation of fragments of historical ages, ranging from the figures of cruelty to the allegories of the post-metaphysical serenity of the ivorld. This is not a kind of "poor thinking" of the post-modern age, but rather, a composed wandering which ušes mental figures of philosophy in order to demonstrate, in essay form, the indescribability of the cruelty of the world in which we witness our own defeats and sufferings and thus find the way out of the vicious circle of the metamorphosis of ideas into movements, ideologies and actions. It seems that this way of thinking cannot do without the artistic forms of the novel or the theatrical play, because only in literary play of the irreplaceable destiny of the individual - free or imprisoned by ideological shackles - can it testify to the pain and joy of human existence after the realisation that the end of history is the beginning of blood-thirsty, post-historical wars, tyrannies and genocides.
How to solve the riddle of this world of horror in which every viewer is simultaneously the witness and the actor on the total stage? An example of one of the greatest heroic failures is certainh/ the theatre ofcruelty of Antonin Artaud and his ideas expressed in fragments from his late writings in which he pragmatically attempted to propose his "post-metaphysical" project of introducing new ideas into the structures of the theatre. Unquestionably, the selection of figures of cruelty as the fundamental "notion" of its aesthetics
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belongs to the genre of avant-garde. Manifests, shock value, exclusivism, elimination of the barrier between the actors and the audience, the death of representation and ali traditional attributes of the theatrical production - that is the cult of the avant-garde, interpreted in one way or another. Thus it is logical that after the death of logocentrism (God, speech, logos), God-language and God-speech have no plače in this brand of theatre. Cruelty becomes the first and only measure of establishing the new subject, and meta-language is the gesture and body-in-action where the traditional notions of space and time lose their meaning. With the breakdown of cruelty - real, corporal cruelty on the stage of presentation - there certainly comes a moment when the pure, presentational visibility does not make the viewer a perverse, Ione voyeur, but rather, an active participant in the play which becomes in its true sense of the word a play of the uiorld, as it was labelled already in the beginning of the 1960's by Kostas Axelos.
This is how he would start with Heraclitus and continue with Mara and Heidegger to arrive at his own planetary belief. The play of the voorld at the end ofhistorj does not deceive itself by imagining that it can isolate cruelty, or surgically remove the return to the golden age of serenity of the bourgeois theatre. In this way - however cvnical this might seem - it is more honest than the post-modern patchwork of simulations and montages, because it does not imagine a refuge in any reworked poetics, which it then decorates with various assertions of historicalh/ dead ages. The theatre ofcrueltj is the mirror image of that dying world in which, as well as in its theatre, from now on reigns crueltj as such, inexpressible, in its naked factualness and contin-gency. For this reason such a theatre, godless and self-destructive, drives to the highest climatic level the consequences of the avant-garde dream about the play of life as art. To imagine Artaud in the video-projection or in the aesthetics of ars electronice of post-modernism is the same as seeing a ghost! Something quite different is an attempt at a well conceived play of ideas as realised particularh/ in the novel by Pascal Bruckner Ledeni mjesec (Lune de fiel) where the figures of cruelty are embodied in a furious romantic, certainly "sentimental journey" to the East, to India, a country that should inject new juices into the tvvilight of the Western civilisation. The traumatic love experi-ence, metamorphoses of obscenity, pornography and eroticism, a double cou-ple in the game of substitution witness how cruelty is not only the priče which is worth paying when the limits of plaving with human destinies are ex-ceeded, but also the internal structure of the existence of evil-in-the-world. The victims of love are just as victimised as those that are punished cruelly and without a reason by the new Moloch, the absent deity and the last advocate of the ideological circle of hatred.
This is the work that the "new moralism", if it exists at aH, will require of their heroes and their imaginary ghosts from the mausoleum of ideologies, even when we have in mind the well-established cult writers of the "sexual
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revolution," such as Marquis de Sade, Weininger, Reich and Bataille. Unlike the "black book with seven seals," namely Lawrence Durell's first novel, The Black Book, in which the escapades of sexuality and cruelty undergo a trav-esty oicraving for a letter/text as the justification of a life's adventure which destroys and creates new heroes and cripples, Bruckner replaces the same craving with the pleasure of storvtelling in the introduction and with seduc-tion through his main anti-hero Franz. The similarities and differences be-tween the former "new philosopher" and the master of the novel of ideas of this century, whose Alexandria Quartet and Avignon Quintet extended the faith in the power and messianism of art, following ali of its defeats and withdrawals, are of such scope that they deserve to be the subject of a separate essay or study. They nevertheless have something in common: the faith in the absence of every belief that ideological programmes, i.e., the legacy of the avant-garde, could offer a refuge to the last man at the end of historj. If the ideologies are dead or travestied, indeed, what will we do with ideas? We have no choice but to dispatch them to where they have come from; to the caves, among the bats and idols of the dark. And then we shall seek out the new light of the world, without the sacrificial altars of the new Moloch.
/
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ŽARKO PAIĆ
Žrtvenik za novog Moloha
U Rječniku simbola Jeana Chevaliera i Alaina Gheerbranta, izrijekom se boga Moloha, prema predaji semitskih jezika, označava kraljem. Posrijedi je božanstvo koje su štovali narodi Moaba, Kanaana, Tira i Kartage, a cesto se zamjenjivao s Ba'alom. "Taj se okrutni kult dovodi u vezu s mitom o Kronu koji je progutao vlastitu djecu; sa žrtvama bogovima Inka. Nesumljivo, Moloh je drevna slika tiranina, ljubomornog, osvetoljubivog i nesmiljenog, koji od svojih podanika zahtijeva pokornost sve do krvi, te im oduzima sva njihova dobra, čak i djecu koja su posvečena smrti u ratu ili na žrtveniku." Na početku svjetske civilizacije i, ako je vjerovati sumračnim navjestiteljima propasti Zapada, u doba posthistorijskih ruševina, ime toga okrutnog božanstva ostaje simbolom vladavine zla u cikličkoj pustolovini ljudskog svijeta. Mit o žderaču vlastitih potomaka zbog očuvanja čovjeku nadredene moči koja drži svijet u stanju iskonske pokornosti - bezrazložne i čudovišno strahotne - zacijelo nije tek puka pripovijest o izgnanstvu povijesnih naroda i njihovoj hudoj sudbini nakon propasti zlatnoga doba. Jer, Moloh se, kao izrod vječnosti, ne pokorava ni vremenu ni povijesti, nego svojem vlastitome zakonu koji izriče onu bolnu zagonetku "bogova, kraljeva i proroka", da je, naime, zlo neiskorjenjivo stablo spoznaje vječne novosti čovjeka i njegove žudnje za neograničenom moči. Zar nismo, uostalom, suvremenici jedne meduigre epoha, koju čak ne umijemo znamenovati pozitivnim pojmovljem nego ukazivanjem na stanje poslije, gdje ono "post" postaje svojevrsnim naputkom za odlazak u "babilonsku ludnicu" (R. Musil), gdje se mahnitost zamenjuje sustavom bezumlja, a Orfejev pjev simulairumom "montažnih strojeva" napretka? I gdje je izvesno samo to da se
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povratak u špilje nedovršene, mutne i dubinski tamne prošlosti savršeno podudara s profinjenom nostalgijom za barbarstvom. Kao nekoč na zalasku srednjovjekovlja, što nam je mjerodavno predočio Johan Huizinga u Jeseni srednjega vijeka, žalobne igre, rituali razaranja, spektakli nasilja, pretkazanja uništenja, misteriji smrti, teorije kaosa uvjerljivo nadilaze ponudu igrokaza vedrine i radosnih utopija vječnog blaženstva na svjetskoj pozornici ideja. Reči če se: "U doba kad je rat mjera svih stvari, samo naivni mandarini buducnost vide kao sliku zemaljskoga raja." I tako, krajnje apsurdno, na ishodu XX. stolječa, kad prava metafora duha vremena postaje kultni svetokrug žrtvenika za novog Moloha, a njegove imaginarne figure bezimeni grobari iz tragedije o danskome mladom princu, opstoji samo jedna velika utopija - ona o kraju povijesti. To što u njezine ideje nitko ozbiljno ne vjeruje, osim filozofa koji ju je na repu Hegela i Marxa treči put obnovio i učinio "velikom pripoviješču", možda je dostatni razlog za jednu prethodnu postavku. Kad su ideologije mrtve ili travestirane, ideje oživljuju u trostrukome obliku: kao putokazi utopijskoga, vječnog spasa, kao nove ideologije u nakaradnom spoju "zmijskog svlaka" i kentaurske groteske, te, naposljetku, kao "treči put" u ko jem filozofijska i/ili umjetnička igra ljubavi i mržnje sabire krhotine povijesnih epoha u rasponu od figura okrutnosti do alegorija postmetafizičke vedrine svijeta. Ovo trojstvo pojavnoga života ideja, medutim, nipošto ne predstavlja neki uvriježeni model mišljenja po uzoru na prokazanu "dijalektičku" baštinu spekulativnoga uma, koji uvijek kuca triput na zaključana metafizička vrata da bi ih poput lupeža ili čarobnjaka otvorio tajnom šifrom. Riječ je tek o pokušaju opisa duhovne situacije vremena nakon spoznaje da s propašču komunizma - te savršene utopije/ideologije kraja povijesti kao vladavine vječnoga terora bez uzvišenosti - ne otpočinje sumrak ideologija, nego mahnito traganje za novim dvojnicima, koji če "posljednjem čovjeku", bolesnom od pobuna i ustrašenom od pustoši neizrecive slobode, vratiti zakratko izgubljeno kraljevstvo idola. Jer, "novi svijet" i "novo doba" potrebuju čvrsto pribježište; mitološko i/ili znanstveno opravdanje ljubavi i obožavanja "moje" nacije, rase, kulture i razloga za mržnju i svirepost spram "drugoga".
Podanici zlatnoga doba
Ideja o kraju povijesti nije apokaliptička vizija svijeta nakon kraja hladnoga rata Zapada i Istoka. Otkako je još potkraj 50-ih godina američki sociolog Daniel Bell, bez proročke gorljivosti, proglasio kraj ideologije, bilo je pitanje vremena kad če neokonzervativna koncepcija društva, politike i kulture s ključnom kategorijom vječne vladavine liberalne demokracije izboriti potpunu pobjedu. Samo je po sebi razvidno da kraj ideologije istodobno pretpostavlja i obuzdavanje utopijskih gradnji novih tornjeva babilonskih. Zato je upravo projekt kraja povijesti kao liberalno-demokratske utopije po svojoj temeljnoj nakani paradoksalni naum. I to stoga što svoj istinski početak odreduje
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pobjedom nad protivničkom ideologijom nakon dugotrajne borbe za svjetsku razdiobu modi. Utopija kraja povijesti, dakle, nastaje nakon smrti jedne ideologije, koja spaja slijepu vjeru u modernost i napredak s teleologijskom/ eshatologijskom vizijom svijeta. Temeljna je razlika, medutim, izmedu tri "velike pripovijesti" o kraju povijesti ta što je samo druga - ona Mancova o komunizmu - zadovoljavala uvjete klasičnih utopija, od hilijastičkih vizija Joakima di Fiore, preko Thomasa Morusa do socijal-utopističkih radnih i životnih pokuša u komunama i kampovima. Naime, ona je prostor i vrijeme spasa čovječanstva vidjela u ekstazi buducnosti kao svjetskoj zajednici bez-različno jednakih. Prvoj i trečoj to nedostaje. Zato što ukazuju, formalno, na ideju prostora, koji se širi iz jednoga središta spram izvanjske okoline. Kao što je poznato, u Hegela je bilo riječi o državi kao objavi apsoluta na zemlji kroz zbilju pruske monarhije, dok Fukuvama pak liberalnu demokraciju postavlja stožerom "novoga svjetskog poretka" u liku Amerike, kraljevstva slobode, modernosti i posljednje svjetske velesile. No, obojica vrijeme ozbiljenja ideje smještaju u sadašnjost. Kraj povijesti završava u igri priznanja pojedinačnih i medudržavnih taština, volje za moč koja od klasičnih ratova za teritorij (predmodernih naroda i "plemena") uzdiže sebe životno-duhovno na visi stu-panj - borbom za prevlast na svjetskom tržištu tehnologije i kapitala. Sve tri "velike pripovijesti" odlikuje nešto strahotno, premda se obično od majstora utopijskih maštarija ne očekuje bezobzirnost i cinizam. O čemu je riječ? Ni o čemu dragom negoli o onoj fatalnoj bolesti koja razlikuje dekadenta od skeptika i barbara u liku aristokratskog filozofa kraja povijesti - o prezira i ravno-dušnosti spram "malih", "slabih", "nepovijesnih" naroda. Ako se Hegelu može pripisati autorstvo te ideje, onda je njezina opča proširenost u politici i kulturi XIX. stolječa u Europi, kako na Zapadu, tako i na Istoku, postala okoštalom strukturam mišljenja u doba pozitivizma i mehaničkih strojeva. Posljedak tog svjetonazora bijaše, iako ne nužnim slijedom, nastanak rasizma i imperijalizma viktorijanskog kova, u odnosu na porobljavanje trečeg svijeta. Mit o rasi uzvišenih ratnika i gospodara i njihovu prirodnom pravu na "etničko čiščenje" svjetskih prostora od inferiornih nacija i rasa samo je legitimni nastavak istog mišljenja dragim sredstvima. Marcu i Engelsu pak, europski "mali narodi" bijahu "kontra-revolucionarni", jer su na repu europske modernosti iziskivali nešto več samo po sebi zastarjelo i prezreno sa stajališta znanstvene ideologije kraja povijesti -državu kao jamstvo draštvenog, kulturnog i, napokon, biološkog opstanka. Ni Fukuyama nije imun na produžetak života ovog zaraznog virusa, koji več gotovo dva stolječa prožimlje primijenjenu filozofiju politike. Kao što su mark-sistima još sredinom prošloga stolječa, primjerice, Hrvati "išli na jetra", kako je to iskazano u jednoj pjesmi hrvatskoga pjesnika Borisa Marune, tako i Fukuvami, izmedu inih, ovaj narod - sada barem otpravljen u mahnitost povijesti - svjedoči da ne pripada u odabrane podanike zlatnoga doba. Jer, za utopiju kraja povijesti nema samilosti spram žrtvenih igara "malih" naroda u "gradanskom ratu u Jugoslaviji". Tek ravnodušnost i dijagnostička analiza
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bolesti, kojoj nema lijeka, osim univerzalne liberalne demokracije, kozmopo-litizma i odricanja od tlapnji kulturalnog utemeljenja nacije. To je onda posljednja riječ utopije o kraju povijesti? Zacijelo nista drugo negoli same old story o zlatnome dobu pomirenja ideje i zbilja u zbiljskome svijetu dosade i melankolije, koje je stari cinik Hegel, valjda svjestan dosega vlastitih ideja, prokazao istovjetnim raju - tom idealnom "zoološkome vrtu." Ako je komu-nizam kao utopijski sustav ideja, i kao ideologija metafizičkoga opravdanja vladavine zla u svjetskoj povijesti, doista mrtav, što demo s univerzalnom liberalnom demokracijom, ako kraj povijesti nužno pretpostavlja i kraj utopije? Može li "posljednji čovjek" živjeti bez utopije? Gdje je njegov istinski habitus? Zar možda u carstvu "svjetske demokracije", koju strašno preziru svi veliki skeptici i dekadenti civilizacije (od Nietzschea do Ciorana), ne stoga što bi obožavali monarhije, diktature ili despocije, nego zato što iza nje ostaje puka jednoličnost, jednakost bez razlika; click & clock, kako je to precizno izrekao Orson Welles u kultnom filmu Treči čovjek, usporedujuči rezultat višestoljetne demokracije jedne Švicarske s uzvišenom ljepotom umjetnosti epohe krvavog tiranina Cezane Borgia?
Povratak ideologija: od "zmijskoga svlaka" do "kentaurske groteske"
Svi postideologijski diskursi na kraju XX. stoljeca prešutno za svoje uteme-ljenje pretpostavljaju 1989. godinu i pad komunizma u Istočnoj Europi. No, zaboravlja se da ovo stolječe poznaje još jednu doista veliku ideologiju, koja je poražena 1945. godine. Dakako, riječ je o fašizmu, ili, ispravnije - njemačkom nacionalsocijalizmu. Sto to povezuje Levijatana i Behemota? Istovjetnost i bitne razlike dvoje "bliskih srodnika" otpočinju tamo gdje nastaje njihovo naizgled nemoguče sjedinjenje. Sto se u doba "hladnoga rata" ne pokazuje obnova fašističkog svjetonazora u otvorenom obliku potrage za mistikom rase/ nacije u zemljama komunističkog poretka Istočne Europe, ne znači da je posrijedi bilo iskorjenjivanje njegova temelja, nego da je komunizam kao ideologija u svojem nastupu kanio biti vrhovnom i jedinom Knjigom kraja povijesti. Istovjetnost bijaše zamfjecena još ranih tridesetih godina, i možda najprodornije rasvijetljena u Heideggerovu mišljenju iz vremena Doba slike svijeta. Ovdje se, naime, i nacionalsocijalizam i komunizam i amerikanizam dosuduju baštinicima modernosti i tehnike, koji ne podaruju čovjeku čistinu bitka i dostojanstvo iskonske slobode. Ono isto u planetarnom pohodu komunizma i fašizma jest ipak nešto mnogo jednostavnije i zato čudovišnije. Želja da se tvorba zbilje izravno proizvede iz ideje. Ideologija je otuda tek naknadni sustav vjerovanja, doktrina, pravila i normi kako doseči cilj - stvaranje novog poretka, koji iz vlastitog razumijevanja "doba slike svijeta" potrebuje "novoga čovjeka". I njemački nacizam i sovjetski/ruski komunizam u tu su svrhu duh vlastite ideologije utjelovili u kulturnoj politici kao organskom dijelu projekcije države i vode kao vječnih, "božanskih" entiteta. Ta srodnost dade se gotovo do
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paroksizma razvidjeti nigdje drugdje nego u umjetnosti, koja je oduvijek bila mjestom imaginarnoga i uzvišenoga, mjestom nepokornosti slobode u svijetu života. Sto je drugo slika nadčovjeka u svijesti nacizma ili slika "novoga čovjeka" sovjetskog tipa negoli ozbiljenje fantazma o istovjetnosti umjetnosti i života, s kojom je idejom avant garda krenula u svoj osvetnički boj protiv dekadencije i ljepote klasične ere humanizma? Tamo gdje je naci-umjetnost kao pokret obnove mitološki pojmljene junačke prošlosti Nijemaca, nastojala sve avangardno i moderno kao "izopačeno" odrubiti mačem poput Obsidi-janove glave, komunizam je podnosio samo u svojem "djevičanskome ruhu", buduči da mu je avangarda podarivala estetički temelj i metafizičko oprav-danje uništenja prošlosti. U svojoj drugoj fazi otvorenog totalitarizma i svijeta terora i gulaga, taj je ornament postao "zločin". Najbolji primjer za tu postavku je slučaj s Maljevičevim suprematizmom. Črni kvadrat idealno je zrcalio apstraktni kolektivizam poretka njegove metode zla i njegovu raščovječenost. S druge pak strane, monumentalno kiparstvo Arna Brekera trebalo je zorno prikazati veličinu i ljepotu germanskog nadčovjeka kao novi klasicizam oblika prirodne tjelesnosti. Ono što, medutim, u spoju dviju suprotstavljenih ideologija totalitarizma XX. stolječa izbija u središte jest estetizacija politike kao sredstvo ozbiljenja nacističke i komunističke ideologije u masovnim spek-taklima. Taj pokušaj nadomještanja krabuljnih plesova smrti, u jednoj, ili životne vedrine, u drugoj, pseudoestetici junačkoga života fascinira svojom mistikom još i danas. Jer, smjerajuči uskrsnuču furije srednjovjekovne opsjed-nutosti ikonozofijom smrti i žrtve, teatralno pokazuje svijet u kojem žrtvenik za novoga Moloha iziskuje rat i masovna umorstva naroda. Kako u tom svijetu biti pošteden idolopoklonstva, ako svaka ideologija več u korijenu slavi totalni pohod "svoje" nacije na ispražnjeno mjesto svjetske igre ideja? Očigledno je tek da nakon propasti komunizma nastaje postideologijska pustoš, koju valja ispuniti nekim sadržajem, barem toliko uvjerljivim i univerzalnim kao što to bijaše komunizam. "Zmijski svlak" ideologija, dakle, nema baš mnogo alternativnih rješenja. Nacionalizam, rasizam, fundamentalizam - gotovo u pravilu postaju partikularne ideologije europskoga Istoka, sjedinjujuči u sebi elemente dviju prethodno opisanih svjetonazora i pokreta. No, njihov je doseg uvijek bitno odreden veličinom (dakako, ne duhovnom) nacije i njezinom pretenzijom spram drugih državnih prostora i naroda. Nacionalizam kao pseudoideologija nije dijete ni komunizma ni fašizma. On je od njih stariji, jer pada u vrijeme nastanka europskih nacionalnih država sredinom XTX. stolječa. Nacionalizam pak kraja XX. stolječa, od početnog "regulativnog" i načelno pozitivnog učvrščenja položaja "malih"naroda Europe postaje glavnom opas-nošču metanacionalnoj izgradnji Europe. To je, uostalom, razvidno ne samo u još aktualnom ratu na prostorima bivše Jugoslavije za etnički čiste prostore "Velike Srbije", nego i u slučaju obnove ruskoga carstva u geopolitičkim pretkazanjima Žirinovskoga i rata u Cečeniji.
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Doba presvlačenja komunističkog "zmijskoga svlaka" ne otpočinje i ne završava s umrtvljenjem i ustoličenjem mita o povijesnome pravu nacije za teritorijem u ono zlatno doba, kad su vilenjaci, zmajevi i usamljeni vitezovi haračili uzduž i poprijeko oniričkoga zemljovida Velike Zemlje. Takvo je doba uvijek prijelazno i u svojoj unutarnjoj biti apokaliptičko. Jer, živi od obečanja nadolaska "novoga doba". Zato i ovdje ideologije nadomjestka komunizma i fašizma svoj utopijski naboj crpe iz armagedonskih strategija religije. Kraj povijesti bit ce dosegnut onda kad narod u svojem duhovnom "pročiščenju" i "obnovi" postigne savršenstvo homogenosti s prošlošču, kad iščeznu zli duhovi modernosti a država objavi vječni život svojim podanicima. Nacionalistički mit o kraju povijesti samo je druga inačica onih triju "velikih pripovijesti", koja svijet na izdisaju ne vidi kao sumrak civilizacije, nego kao "novi početak". To je trenutak nastupa posljednjeg čina preobrazbe ideologija, kad u svoje-vrsnoj kentaurskoj grotesci prisustvujemo mimohodu naizgled nespojivih ele-menata. Tko je mogao zamisliti da bi neofašizam mogao imati čak i "ljudski lik"? Ili da bi u tom istom liku mogao prepoznati davolji, neokomunistički rep na sablasti novih ideologija koje danas vladaju istokom Europe? No, Zapad nije u tom "postmodernome cirkusu" nevin. Dapače, njegova ravnodušnost, cinizam i dosada u promatranju okrutnosti noše klasični voaverski sindrom, onu nečuvenu nostalgiju za barbarstvom, koja ne može nadomjestiti osječaj da u tom svijetu kao totalnom kazalištu nema milosti za žrtve. Valja ih ostaviti da crknu, kao "umoreno pseto", bez nade da če sram u tom duhovnome procesu nadživjeti epohu postmodeme slike svijeta kao telematičke vizije beskrajno umnoženoga zla.
Figure okrutnosti, alegorije vedrine
"Treči put" s onu stranu vječnoga izmišljanja novih utopija i ideologija, kad više nema ni velikih filozofijskih gigantomahija ni sustava mišljenja poput egzistencijalizma, strukturalizma, hermeneutike, nije nipošto istoznačan s ideologijama "trečega puta", medu kojima metapolitika novih desnica odreduje smjer povijesne regresije. Imenovali smo ga "tehnički" ovim pojmom, a on, široko shvačeno, obuhvača različite pokušaje filozofijske i/ili umjetničke igre ljubavi i mržnje u sabiranju krhotina povijesnih epoha u rasponu od figura okrutnosti do alegorija postmetafizičke vedrine svijeta. To nije nikakvo "slabo mišljenje" postmodernoga doba, nego sabrano lutanje koje rabi misaone figure filozofije da bi esejistički prikazalo neprikazivost okrutnosti svijeta u kojem svjedočimo vlastite poraze i patnje i tako potražilo izlaz iz začaranog kruga metamorfoza ideja u pokrete, ideologije, akcije. Takvo mišljenje kao da ne može bez umjetničkih oblika romana ili drame, jer samo u književnoj igri nenadomjestive sudbine pojedinca - slobodnog ili zatočenog ideologijskim uzničarima - može iskazati bol i radost egzistencije čovjeka nakon spoznaje da je kraj povijesti početak krvavih posthistorijskih ratova, tiranija, genocida.
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Kako rasključati tajnu tog svijeta užasa u kojem je svaki gledatelj istodobno i svjedok, igrač na totalnoj pozornici? Primjer jednog od največih, junačkih promašaja zacijelo je kazalište okrutnosti Antonina Artauda i njegove zamisli, fragmenti iz kasnih spisa u kojima je programatski pokušao podastrijeti svoj "postmetafizički" projekt strujanja novih ideja u strukture kazališnoga života. Neprijeporno, izbor figura okrutnosti kao temeljnog "pojma" njegove estetike pripada žanru avangarde. Manifesti, šokiranje, ekskluzivizam, dokidanje ram-pe izmedu aktera i gledatelja, smrt reprezentacije i svih klasičnih referencija kazališnog uprizorenja - to je kult ovako ili onako pojmljene avangarde. Stoga je logično da nakon smrti logocentrizma (Boga, govora, logosa), Bogu-jeziku, Bogu-govoru u takvom kazalištu nema mjesta. Okrutnost postaje prva i jedina mjera uspostavljanja novog subjekta i metajezika gesta, tijela-u-akciji, gdje tradicionalni pojmovi prostora i vremena gube značenje. S prolomom okrutosti, zbiljske, tjelesne na pozornicu kao pri-kazalište zacijelo nastaje trenutak kad čista, pred-stavljačka vidljivost ne čini od gledatelja perverznog, samotnog voaveura, nego sudionika u igri koja postaje u pravom smislu riječi -igra svijeta, kako ju je još početkom '60-ih godina znamenovao Kostas Axelos da bi od Heraklita preko Manca i Heideggera dospio do vlastita planetarnoga mišljenja. Igra svijeta na kraju povijesti ne utvara sebi da može izolirati okrutnost, ili je odstraniti kirurškim rezom povratka u zlatno doba spokojne gradanske drame. Po tome je ona, koliko se god to činilo cinično, poštenija od postmodernih patchivorka simulacija i montaža, jer ne izmišlja pribježište u ovoj ili preradenoj poetici, koju onda urešava različitim navodima povijesno mrtvih epoha. Kazalište okrutnosti zrcalna je slika tog svijeta na izdisaju u kojem, kao i u njegovu kazalištu, caruje odsad okrutnost kao takva, neiskaziva, u svojoj goloj faktičnosti i kontingenciji. Zato takvo kazalište, obezboženo i samorazaralačko, do krajnjeg vrhunca dovodi konzekvencije avangardnog sna o igri života kao umjetnosti. Zamisliti Artauda u video-projekciji ili u estetici ars electronice postmoderne ravno je sablazni! Drugi je pokušaj promišljene igre s idejama navlastito preveden u romanu Pascala Brucknera Ledeni mjesec, gdje se figure okrutnosti utjelovljuju u furioznom ljubavnom, gotovo "sentimentalnom putovanju" na Istok, u Indiju koja bi sumraku zapadnjačke civilizacije trebala ubrizgati nove sokove. Traumatično ljubavno iskustvo, metamorfoze opscenosti, pornografije i erotike, dvostrukog para u zamjeničnim igrama svjedoči kako okrutnost nije samo cijena koju valja platiti kad se prijedu granice igre s ljudskim sudbinama, nego unutarnja struktura opstoj-nosti zla-u-svijetu. Ljubavne žrtve nisu nista manje od žrtava koje bezrazložno i okrutno kažnjava novi Moloh, odsutno božanstvo kao posljednji potporanj ideologijskog kruga mržnje. To je djelo, koje če "novi moralizam", ako on to uopče jest, pretpostaviti svojim junacima i njihovim imaginarnim sablastima iz mauzoleja ideologija, čak i kad je riječ o establiranim kult-spisateljima "seksualne revolucije", od Markiza de Sadea do Weiningera, Reicha i Bataillea. Za razliku od "črne knjige sa sedam pečata", naime, prvog romana Lawrencea
Sodobnost 2001 I 298
Žarko   Paić
Durella, Črna knjiga, u kojoj se eskapade seksualnosti i okrutnosti travesti-raju žudnjom za pismom/tekstom kao opravdanjem životne pustolovine koja razara i stvara nove junake i bogalje, Bruckner ce istu žudnju nadomjestiti užitkom u pripovijedanju, uvodenju i zavodenju preko svojeg glavnog, negativ-nog junaka Franza. Istovjetnost i razlike izmedu nekoč "novoga filozofa" i majstora romana ideja u ovom stolječu, čiji Aleksandrijski kvartet i Avinjonski kvintet produžuju vjeru u moč i poslanstvo umjetnosti nakon svih njezinih poraza i odustajanja, tolike su da zaslužuju poseban esej ili študiju. Ipak im je nešto zajedničko: naime, vjera u odsutnost svakog vjerovanja da bi ideologijski programi, baština avangarde, mogli pružiti utočište posljednjem čovjeku na kraju povijesti. Ako su ideologije mrtve ili travestirane, doista - sto čemo s idejama. Ne preostaje nam nista drugo negoli otposlati ih tamo odakle su i prispjele u ovaj svijet. U špilje. Medu netopire i idole mraka. I potražiti novu svjetlost svijeta, bez žrtvenika za novoga Moloha.
Sodobnost 2001 I 299