AB You are often regarded as a so-called French poststructuralist. And it is true that, like Derrida and Lyotard, you have formulated a fundamental critique of semiotics and structuralism. This critique reflects a radical rejection of any reference, denotation, indeed, of any stable notion of truth, reality and meaning. Your work also includes elements of the critique of Marxism that is manifestly present in Lyotard. This suggests the existence of a shared project which, it seems to me, can best be summarised as a thorough distrust of any sort of metaphysics. At the same time, your works are markedly different from those of Derrida or Lyotard.
Most certainly . . .
AB So my question is, would you agree if I said that Lyotard’s and Derrida’s works may be characterised as philosophies of difference and yours as an approach to indifference? In short, how would you position yourself within poststructuralism?
I can respond only to what you are saying about me, about a philosophy of indifference, or rather, a strategy of indifference: it is with this description that I agree. As for Derrida and Lyotard, it is for them to answer your question for I am not in a position to say how they feel about this. I am not sure whether they would really agree to the epithet of ‘difference’, since in a way it still smacks too much of structuralism. It is still too suggestive of a quest for meaning, for difference. And what’s more, the political and ideological connotations of the concept of ‘difference’ have become highly problematical. This means I cannot really speak for them. Nor am I used to evaluating one in relation to the other, to make a comparison. Each of us, certainly myself, has taken his own individual and independent approach. So to tell you the truth, there has hardly been any direct influence. There has always been a close friendship between Lyotard and myself. I do not know Derrida quite so well, but I do know him too, despite the lack of interaction between the two of us. I believe that, as thinkers, we have each gone our own ways, even if we have followed tracks that in a way are inside the same nebula. I’d agree that all three of us more or less move within the same Zeitgeist, although I feel that, unlike myself, they are more of philosophising philosophers [philosophes philosophantes]. In short, I do not know what I really am . . . [laughs]. So I do not think of this in terms of either opposition or agreement. There are parallels, for sure, but to argue that our tracks converge would be untenable. I for one have rather tried to stretch the logic of difference as far as it would go, to make it an extreme phenomenon. To take it to the point where difference totally destroys itself and loses itself in indifference. Indeed, I do not regard indifference as total negation, as the destruction of things, but as the very opposite, I see it as a special quality, a kind of colour, a kind of rhythm, in short, a way to let things be, to let things do, etc. Basically, in essence, this is about recognising something like fate. That is, in a way, it is about the subject waiving its pretention to control the world and its own destiny; waiving any enforcement of meaning, any enforcement of differences; waiving this continuous delimitation of things and of oneself with respect to the different or the other, etc. In essence, indifference is creating the minimum distance or void in order for something different to arise, either a pure event or a pure object, or else alterity, which is not the same as difference, of course. Alterity as fate.
Mind you, I’m not using the term ‘fate’ in its religious sense but as a kind of event, more particularly that element of the event that transcends the subject – its own difference, its recognition of itself. It seems to me that both identity and difference, as well as the associated twin concepts ‘identity/difference’ [sic], have become as much of an outdated issue as the body and the soul. There is a kind of opposition that has produced a very fine culture, although right now, we are already fully immersed in a culture of difference, a culture that has turned difference into a genuine cult, with all the rituals surrounding it that we can see today. We have reached the stage of definitive difference, which recognises ‘every individual’s difference’ – which is sheer nonsense! I am using the term ‘difference’ here in its usual sense, not in its specific sense of différance as used by Derrida.
AB You often refer to the ecstasy of things. Isn’t that a discourse that remains caught in the subject–object dialectics and opposition? Isn’t it a discourse that rather confirms than transcends the binary logic of dialectics? What you wrote in the 1980s seems to be characterised by such a binary logic, with numerous references to dichotomies between subject and object, production and seduction, male and female, reality and appearance, irreversibility and reversibility. This suggests the rather stern question of whether this isn’t yet another case of pure metaphysics, a projection of your subjective categories onto the real, a kind of fetishism of the sign projected onto objective reality, invoking a supremacy of the object which may be nothing but a continuation of a philosophy of subjectivity, albeit veiled. Wouldn’t it have been preferable to deconstruct this dichotomist thinking itself and demonstrate that dichotomies are indeterminate and indefinite? That there is no such thing as either a pure hegemony of the object or a pure hegemony of the subject?
Your question isn’t stern, it is justified. It lays the finger on something that is fundamental and problematic. What I do object to is your use of the term ‘binary’. I do not employ binary opposition but it is obvious that this may cause misunderstanding. Let us take the subject–object opposition. When I refer to ‘object’, it need not necessarily be clear what I mean by that in my writings, for the simple reason that any discourse requires this kind of terminology. What is certain though, is that I no longer approach ‘object’ from any established binary opposition, be it dialectical or otherwise, but from a kind of antagonism. If there are two poles, their relation here is always one of challenge, of antagonism, etc.
By way of illustration, I will first discuss the subject–object opposition and then return to the good and the bad [le mal]. Although it is true that I use the term ‘object’, this doesn’t mean that I declare myself in favour of the object and therefore move entirely to the other side . . . if that were so, you would be right. We all are in a condition of subjective projection anyway, for that matter. Nobody will ever succeed in neutralising this dimension, because it is the dimension that is inherent in any discourse. So . . . I do not adopt a position in favour of the object for, to me, the object, its position, its antagonistic position, is beyond the subject and the object! It is not an alternative to the subject; the subject is not the opposite of the object in the sense that the only choice left would be that between the hegemony of the subject and the hegemony of the object. If we look at it from this perspective, we are not concerned with dichotomy or binary thinking, not even with alternatives. What we are concerned with is a change of the rules. A game doesn’t necessarily involve two opposed, hostile terms. You have the game, you have the rules and you have the opponents. You have a relationship between the parties participating in the game. What you do not have is a rational or polar relationship marked by contradiction or opposition, etc.
The same holds for the good and the bad. When I refer to ‘the bad’ – which I do regularly, maybe excessively – to me it likewise means something that goes beyond the opposition between the good and the bad. That is to say, the opposition between good and bad itself is ‘the good’, while any position on this or the other side of this opposition represents ‘the bad’. In other words, the bad is beyond the good–bad opposition.
So this is how antagonism should be interpreted. Once you do so, you leave dichotomies behind and enter something new, a kind of singularity that can no longer be opposed to anything. In other words, interaction is impossible and there is no ‘game’, for if there was, if the categories of the subject could still be exchanged with those of the object, or if the object was made into a supersubject, a hypersubject, we would still be dealing with traditional metaphysics . . .
AB But then again, aren’t we simply dealing with an inversion of metaphysics?
I hope not. It’s a reversion; I don’t know very well how to put it. While metaphysics aims yet to find some sort of transcendence of opposites, we are here trying to break through this transcendence. Our aim is to explore what happens on the other side or on this side, or anywhere else . . . The following example, on the masculine and the feminine, may help to shed some light on this. When in Seduction2 I discussed the feminine in terms of seduction, critical response was to immediately draw a line between seduction and production . . . arguing that the one was opposed to the other. But this is not how I represented it. To me, the feminine is a radical alterity that in a way transcends mere gender-related difference. While the masculine–feminine opposition is defined by gender-related difference, it is another thing to transcend this difference. We are dealing with a dualistic relationship, which is something very different, and in which the feminine is beyond the masculine and the feminine. Here, the term is in a position of singularity, of alterity, and no longer in a position of identity/difference between the terms. Nobody has ever found a term to indicate this position on the other side, so that we simply have to choose either the feminine or the symbolic or the bad, all of which are terms that in the discourse may readily revert to or, if you like, relapse into the differential. However, this is not about the differential.
AB Looked at from this point of view, what you said about the order of seduction is very interesting. For in the order of seduction, you introduced the principle of uncertainty, of postponement, of reversibility, of appearance, etc., contrasting it with the order of dialectics, which symbolises classical metaphysics. The latter still recognises truth, reality, essence, balance, reconciliations, synthesis, Aufhebung, meaning, etc.
We could contrast Aufhebung here with Nietzsche’s Überwindung [overcoming].
AB In your work, this transcendence of dialectics is associated with a strategy of duplication, transgression, radical antagonism whose purpose it is to cause opposition to burst. This tends towards a profiling and a supremacy of the objects. Ecstasy as a form of proximity and hyperreality, ultimately even as a form of inertia and entropy. In this respect, can you tell me whether it is true that in particular parts of your work you have said that everything is predestined, everything is defined or determined . . .?
It is not ‘defined’ but ‘predefined’, ‘predetermined’.
AB I wonder if this view is not in contrast with the idea of seduction, which you would admit only so as to speak in terms of uncertainty, about something that in a way cannot be fixed. When you assert that everything is predefined or predestined and thus marked by predestination, I must say I get the impression that this is about fatality, which is somehow overly positive and overly unavoidable.
Well, the term ‘fatality’ could resolve this. I do not conceive of predestination in terms of a linear order according to which things are predestined from the very start to lead to . . . We do not find ourselves in the linear order but in the fatal order, according to which the consequences precede the causes, etc. In fact, what we have here is an inversion of the logical order, that is, something that is opposed to a world or a universe such as we know it, where things are characterised by destination and definition. We could say that we exist in a predefined world, or even, as today’s academics describe it, in a condition of indetermination – and this is interesting. However, indetermination is not predestination. I didn’t want to keep limiting myself to a universe of coincidence, chaos, indetermination, uncertainty, although I believe that this is our universe today. We are no longer in a condition of determination, while indetermination and determination continue to form a pair. We continue to think in terms of the same pair. Predestination is rather the idea that things fit in a different order than the pair of determination–indetermination. This predestination should not be taken in its religious sense, because it is not confined to any framework. It is an entwinement, or rather an irreversibility, governed by a sort of strange attraction, no longer defined by the certainties of the subject but by something else. As a result, destination originates somewhere else, it is no longer a destination of the subject. This is more or less what I call predestination. In this case too, the term may cause misunderstanding, because it might yet be interpreted according to its religious meaning, for instance. In that case, it would seem as if the things do carry their purpose from the outset: the purpose is ingrained in the very origin and is fulfilled in the course of the cycle. But we can no longer speak of finality here in the rational sense of the term: it rather embodies fatality. The same sign exists in the beginning and in the end. The sign is not subject to change: there is only fate fulfilling itself. And everything that seems to keep you apart from such fate or sign takes you closer to it, in a kind of reversibility of things. There you have what I mean by predestination, more or less.
I would like add something about predestination. It effectively involves that something no longer moves from one point to another. By the way, the fact that it is no longer governed by finality does not mean that nothing at all or only indetermination remains. Quite the contrary, what remains is a very, very necessary concatenation belonging to the fatal, namely a fatal concatenation of forms. In this view, predestination consists in running through the entire concatenation of forms. By doing that, we are sure to go through the entire cycle, without there being any end or finality of an order. There is only the eternal return of something. Only then can we speak of fate. I do not see fate as something negative. There is a transition to a different order which is no longer a rational concatenation of causes and effects but a concatenation of the forms themselves. These forms are no longer the subject’s creations: the subject is included for nothing. In fate, the subject completes the entire cycle, possibly with some luck. On the other hand, we reside in a world that is increasingly cutting us off from this concatenation of forms. It is a world in which there is nothing but a concatenation of value and determination. In fate there is, however, a radical alternative. This is rather a form of metamorphosis, which currently escapes rational concatenation.
AB My final question is not entirely a question of my own but links up with criticism voiced by Douglas Kellner, an American author who has written extensively about you. I would like to know if his criticism holds water. Its bottom line is that, because your system, particularly as far as the ecstasy of the object is concerned, allows no room for a human factor or any activity of the human subject, you are not able to formulate a social critique or even to propose social measures that could lead to a social alternative or revolt. This is actually rather a classical neo-Marxist critique. My question is in fact a bit more open: how would you consider your activity in terms of a policy, a political engagement with current events, today’s violence and warfare?
Kellner is right: I am not politically engaged in any sense of taking stands, of identifying with leftist rather than rightist politics, etc. . . . In this sense, I have reached the stage of ‘indifference’ and cannot be engaged any more. While I am by no means indifferent to current events, I do not believe politics can offer any true solutions because they are based on the false choice between left and right. I think that in our day this choice is merely illusionary and that it is in fact nothing but a form of true indifference, of negative indifference. This means that politics has become indifferential.
Although Kellner is right, he takes this to be something negative, whereas I consider it to be an advantage, not a shortcoming. I think we should go beyond the political sphere because politics has become entangled in its false opposites. Indeed, modern-day politics is where the political will or political energy has reached its absolute minimum. I also agree as far as the social is concerned. I have written about the end of the social. I have argued that nothing is left in this realm, that there is now a different commitment that is much more important and of which the social is nothing but a blueprint, impotent and almost nihilistic in a Nietzschean sense. The social has become a palliative, serving to distract from and cover up what is really at stake.
Today’s challenges require a different strategy. Not a strategy involving actors and their associated role patterns, their trite political slogans, their discourses, in short, all the hot air of the political. The strategy we need is about resisting such an objectively undifferentiated universe. It is this undifferentiatedness that is the negative, which erodes all differences because it leaves nothing to discover or to understand, because it has become devoid of any commitment or rule. The only way to tackle such a universe is through utter indifference, starting from this undifferentiatedness itself to create the possibility of bringing about different strategies and recovering those commitments that are not founded on predetermined violence but on a new form of violence. In hindsight, I do not oppose all the violence of the past; quite the contrary, for this violence served a purpose. Today, however, we are faced with a universe marked by a sort of indeterminate violence that nobody knows what purpose it serves. It no longer has a subject and in fact no longer has any actors either. And this is the kind of chaotic universe that constitutes the environment of today’s existence. I am no longer engaged because I think that nowadays engagement is a sham and I find it disgusting. I no longer identify with the rules of the game, including everything that is happening in France right now. I think that’s absolutely ridiculous, a lost game. Is there a way to recover a different way of acting, a different dramaturgy? I think so, I hope so, for if I didn’t, I’d stop writing. I think that Kellner’s view of the social is extremely old-fashioned and conservative. We may have to reinvent the game of the social and base it on disappearance. I mean: politics in terms of a fatal strategy. The social is over, morals are over, etc. . . . We should start playing the game from this disappearance and stop trying to go back and recover old objects, etc. We should start from their disappearance and see what is to be found on the other side.
BH If you look at the Gulf War, do you think there can still be a war as von Clausewitz defined it?
According to von Clausewitz, war is the continuation of politics by other means. The Gulf War, on the other hand, is the continuation of the absence of politics by other means. The universe of von Clausewitz is a universe of power politics, of real powers; in this universe, there is a real political commitment and in a way the war is a medium, a means to obtain power in this manner. There is power politics, with actors, that is, enemies, specified, clearly identified enemies, and there is a beginning of war and an end of war. This war is also a theatre, indeed a heroic kind of theatre. And there is a typical field strategy. I am not sacralising the Gulf War but this conflict belongs to a new form that is not really a war between enemies. There is no confrontation. There is a special technological effect that isn’t even military any more but only technological. It is no longer possible to clearly discern the political commitment at stake. The commitment is rather that of a police force focusing on control and the creation of a new world order in which nothing will happen, if feasible. In a way, it is rather the universe of a non-event. And the war belongs to this category of non-event, heralding an uneventful world-order. To put it differently: it is a war that is no longer there . . . war as defined by von Clausewitz still had its strategy, unfolding in the field, etc. The Gulf War, on the other hand, is warfare in its purest form, the ecstasy of war, war launched into orbit: a mere operation, not an action, not a theatre any more, there is no longer a genuine stage of war. What we have is a kind of total operationality of war in its pure form, a form that is so pure that there are neither enemies nor commitments.
BH If there was a war, where are the defeated? If there are no defeated, there is no war. But aren’t the Iraqi people the victims?
Saying the Gulf War is no longer a war does not mean that there is no more violence, that there are no more dead, etc. There are dead but, you see, the Iraqi dead – this is awkward because whoever speaks about this is immediately and invariably dismissed as a cynic – these dead are no longer military victims . . . Of course there were civilian casualties, a hundred thousand Iraqis died, but they were merely and simply . . . they were exterminated, ‘tele-exterminated’, if you allow me to say so; it is this ‘tele-destruction’ that’s changing everything. This is no longer a part of the war. The ‘tele-operational’ dimension is changing everything, including the nature and the status of the dead. This means there are no more war victims, they have vanished, merely vanished, they have been exterminated.
BH In your second and third essays on the Gulf War, you recognise the use-value of military equipment, you recognise that action was taken, something which was not predicted in your first essay, ‘The Gulf War Will Not Take Place’.
Yes, but it is a use-value that is purely operational. Of course, there was the deployment of military equipment but everything was a part of the virtual reality of warfare. It is as if this war was waged on screen. That is, as far as the Americans are concerned, for regrettably, the others had no other option. The Americans wage war as if on screen. They parachute war like they parachuted peace in Bosnia: peace and war have both become virtual, unfolding in a particular manner on screen. You could call it a scenario, a real scenario that has some play the role of the victims. They are operationalised as victims; indeed, they are no longer responsible for their own destruction. In this sense, everything is virtual. Please note that when I say that war will not take place, that war is not taking place or did not take place, it is a kind of prophecy. People say to me: but the war did take place! But then, a prophecy is not made to be realised. The prophets generally announce what will take place, while what they prophesise generally doesn’t take place. As for myself, I say that ‘this will not take place’, and it takes place nonetheless! This is the very opposite [laughs].
BH When you predict that ‘The war will not take place’, you mean that the war will not take place as a classical event as referred to by von Clausewitz.
That’s right, as a classical event . . . but let me elaborate on this. ‘The war will not take place’, this is a prophecy. Again, a prophecy is by no means proclaimed to become fulfilled – this is the cause of the misunderstanding. The prophecy is proclaimed to provoke an event, to bring about the end of the event while it is going on. A prophecy ensures that the end intervenes, that the event is overtaken by its end, reaching the other side. Whether or not the prediction comes true is not the issue. In any case, I regarded the Gulf War as a wholly new reality, as something that had ended before it took place. This conflict did not take place in history because it had already taken place through informatics, the media, through all the dances of the virtual reality of information. This can no longer be said to be an event in history because all events were already included in their anticipated distribution. There wasn’t even a beginning, because they already existed at any moment. The Second Gulf War is a good example of this because it never took place. Well, this Second Gulf War already existed through CNN, it was already there in Baghdad through CNN before it took place. Subsequently it took place or didn’t really take place, but it had already existed in the sphere of information. Much like the first, the Second Gulf War already took place at the level of CNN.
BH Is this ‘Iraq versus USA’ a never-ending story?
An endless history? Yes, but for almost political reasons. I never believed that the US wanted to eliminate Saddam Hussein. I always believed that Saddam Hussein was a footman, an objective accomplice. In the Islamic world, he fulfilled the role of counter-fire, of abscess. So . . . Saddam Hussein is preserved. No problem presents itself here; there will be two, three Gulf Wars, what does it matter, Saddam Hussein will always be there. The goal is not to win, no, the goal is to preserve him and at the same time keep up the appearances of war. All of which is intended – this is quite obvious – to gain control over the Islamic world, which I would say constitutes the true front line. It is here that we can see a war is really going on: there is a fundamental antagonism, there is really something decisive at the global level. The effective target is the Islamic world. This is also clear in post-war situations, where we have the West pitted against any other force that resists Western values. This post-war situation was real. And the Gulf War was meant to cover up this truth. So, as they say, a war can always cover up another war. The war, which didn’t really take place, covers up another war, the real war. Saddam Hussein served as the focus of a commitment that will not unfold elsewhere. In this sense, we are already in World War IV. We already had the example of a World War III, which didn’t take place, a virtual war, launched into orbit. We have now slightly departed from the dimension of von Clausewitz. Because the war is being waged on a global scale, we can no longer recognise the enemy, or the commitment; it’s a power that, in a way, keeps itself going and neutralises everything else. But it is no longer offering resistance to anything in particular. This is no longer a real battle, at least, not in terms of power relations. If there is a battle at all, it is the total opposition between value systems.
BH What to make of Chechnya or the issue of Israel and Palestine? Isn’t what we have here two ideologies, two parties, two armies, fighting each other in very traditional fashion?
We cannot be too sure about that, because Israel and Palestine are not facing each other in the traditional way of two countries fighting over a territory. They are more like extras in a tragedy the plot of which is far beyond them . . . This is another abscess. They are not on the same level, however. Militarily and technologically, Israel is a superpower in the image of the United States. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have been outdated by history in a singular manner. They do not exist in the way that the Israelis exist. The question here is a question of legal status, the recognition of something. Well, the Israelis do not recognise the Palestinians as real enemies; to them, they are people to be excluded or placed in a reserve. It is not a confrontation between potentially equivalent adversaries. Not at all. The war of Israel is a policing war, with the Israelis acting as the police force.
BH And what about the Hutus and Tutsis?
I am not a strategist, mind you [laughs].
BH Isn’t this a battle, involving two parties, two armies? Isn’t this a war as von Clausewitz defined it?
You know well that there are global political interests underlying the conflict between the Hutus and the Tutsis, interests they do not share. The poor, if I may say so, are killing one another. You can see this happening in Algeria today. They are murdering each other following strategies they do not share. This is the same hypocrisy, the same masquerade that has people killing each other by the thousands and by the millions for interests they do not share. They are being manipulated like puppets on a string.
BH Is the new world order already a reality? Have the Americans been successful in establishing this new order?
I don’t think so. There can be no question of success, for with a growing consolidation of a new order comes a growing counter-order, a fundamental disorder, originating in all those special hotspots that offer resistance to the world order. Like the social order, the world order is based on exclusion; all those who cannot be accommodated are excluded. The fight is by no means any longer against the enemies but against those excluded, those that are made to kill each other so as to eliminate them. The Rwandans are persuaded to kill each other, simply because they are being sacrificed. Or the homeless or any other excluded group of people: they’re being let down. Their death is not caused by an act of war, which is still a kind of symbolic murder. Their death is now the result of destruction. The new world order is based on a value system at the top, while all the rest is subjected to elimination.
BH Do you think the purpose of World War IV will be to consolidate this new order?
Yes, I think the new world order is our virtual reality. The poor, those who do not participate in this order because they have been cast out, will unfortunately continue to exist in the real. They will not exist in the virtual, in this privileged place where operations take place and power is located. In the real, civilians will continue to kill each other and starve to death. So you’re right, there is still suffering, violence, etc. in a real order, which is an inferior order, an order that is no longer valuable per se. The values have been monopolised by the virtual.
BH Do you think a virtual world war is going to be a conflict between two major opposing value systems, for example, America versus the Islamic world?
No, I believe it will no longer be about value systems. There will be one comprehensive value system having no value in itself. There is no such thing as a Western value system. There is only a technological power with a false value system, comprising human rights, democracy, etc., which is sheer ideology; apart from that, there will only be special hotspots. And the moment will come when, somehow, all this is going to explode. Not in the name of any value system, however. It is going to explode simply because of the expulsion, rejection, exclusion. What I describe in The Perfect Crime, the retaliation by the peoples of the mirror, to me is the famous fable by Borges.3 The peoples of the mirror, expelled to the other side of the mirror and condemned to be nothing but an image, that is, the virtual resemblance of the others, at one point emerge on the surface to renew the battle . . . we do not know what will happen at such a moment. Mind you, this is not a geographical thing. It would be only natural to think that it is the Africans, the Muslims, etc. that are on the other side of the mirror. But we are all there virtually. This new world order will be limited by a fully technological entity devoid even of any human actors. In this respect, it will resemble the capitalist system. It will be a machinery existing and functioning with complete independence, with all of us playing the role of extras. We already exist in this virtual reality, we too have already been virtualised. The abyss between a superior order and all those that have been made inferior will lead to a confrontation between special hotspots and a triumphant globalisation. This confrontation is taking place inside each of us, that much is certain.
Translated by Dick van Spronsen
NOTES
1. On 16 April 1998, Antoon Van den Braembussche and Bas Haan met with Jean Baudrillard in his Parisian residence, and asked him the following questions on philosophy and on geopolitics, respectively.
2. Baudrillard, J. (1990), Seduction, London: Macmillan. [Editors]
3. Baudrillard, J. (1996), The Perfect Crime, London: Verso, pp. 148–9. [Editors]
© Antoon Van den Braembussche, Bas Haan, Dick van Spronsen, Filosofie. Original publication: ‘Interview met Baudrillard’, Filosofie, 17: 3, June–July 2007, pp. 28–33.