Hiding From the Gods: on emancipation and the Public

 

 

The Reflux

 

Ten years after 1968, Italy was probably the only Western European country in which the wave of rebellion and dangerous dreaming of the 60s hadn’t yet exhausted its energy. The desire for autonomy, communism and communization seemed to be deeply rooted both in the hearts of the factory workers and in those of the students. While the institutional apparatus of the P.C.I. appeared determined to entrench itself within the parliamentary framework and the rhetoric of gradual and progressive social change, myriad other groups were still opting for the uncompromising strategy of full communism ‘here and now’. Countless collective experiences, free radios, workers’ associations and even armed groups were, at that time, still blossoming in almost every Italian city.

 

Then, as the decade turned into the next one, something changed. The extra-parliamentary left rapidly lost most of its consensus, free radios and free publications closed in the dozens, armed groups met the military response of the State, heroin spread like a plague among the young, and even the then famously strong metal workers’ unions shattered against the reconfiguration of capitalist production.

 

According to some, the beginning of the end of the Italian way to utopia can be traced back to a laughably minor event. On Wednesday 13th September 1978, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera published on its front page the desperate letter of a fifty-year old man, torn between the fading love for his wife and the passion for a younger woman. Incapable of choosing between the two, the man had decided to commit suicide. During one of the bloodiest of the ‘lead years’, with over 30 people killed either by the police or by armed political groups, the main Italian newspaper decided to move away from the sorry chronicle of terrorism and repression, and to give their readers what they – supposedly – wanted: small, unthreatening, private stories. Two years later, in 1980, the publisher Laterza released ‘Il Trionfo del Privato’ (The Triumph of the Private Sphere), an edited collection in which several commentators described the end of two decades of social rebellion as a passage from ‘the public’ to ‘the private’.

 

This apparent riflusso – ‘reflux,’ as it was famously defined in 1980 by the Italian magazine Panorama – towards the private, was interpreted as a sign of tiredness of the Italian population for the routes and promises of radical politics. Over the compulsory ‘publicness’ of the experiments of emancipatory, communal living of the previous decades, 1980s Italians seemingly preferred the ‘private’ life championed by the then new capitalism. According to what has now become the official history of that period, the political apathy of the 1980s was to be understood as a process of individual disengagement from mass politics, aimed at the pursuit of personal and ephemeral pleasures in the sphere of one’s private life. Following Thatcher’s famous motto, this reading of the history of those years acknowledges the disappearance of society during the 1980s, and the supposed ability of the empire of Capitalism to allow each person to develop a life of his or her own, in a state of perfect and complete disentanglement from societal and political dynamics.

 

Needless to say, this interpretation of that era – which in Italy has now reached a general consensus on both the left and the right – presents an incredibly sweeping simplification, if not a complete misunderstanding, of the discourse over private and public dynamics in the sphere of life and politics. But is it really that different from today’s common conceptions about the public and the private?

 

Let us observe two of the assumptions that are at the basis of the historical misunderstanding described above.

 

The Public and Emancipation

 

We should begin by focusing on the conceptualization of the opposition between the individual and the collective, the personal and the public, in terms of a struggle for emancipation. According to virtually every discourse on the left, no emancipatory struggle is ever possible outside of a public, collective frame. As it is particularly noticeable in communist thought, but equally in that of anarcho-syndicalism, the only possible salvation for an individual is supposed to lay in his or her making-public of his or her claims, within the structure of a collective struggle. This understanding of emancipation only as a collective possibility, to be achieved in the public arena, also filters in feminist discourses, and especially in those who stress the public relevance of a woman’s body as the battleground on which emancipation meets repression. Similarly, we should interpret the motto ‘the personal is political’ as an attempt of giving public connotations to the personal sphere – a process which is perceived as the only possible way of enhancing the emancipatory potential of one’s individual life. It is revealing, in this sense, how the defeat of Italian radical movements at the end of the 1970s was described as a passage from the public terrain of the collective to the personal one of the individual – as if such a passage could not be but one of defeat for all emancipatory attempts.

 

But is this really the case? Is the public sphere the only possible terrain on which a person can fight and possibly achieve his or her emancipation? Is it only as part of a greater collectivity – or, as in the discourse over universal emancipation, of the whole of humanity – that one can struggle for his or her own autonomy?

 

Max Stirner already warned us, in The Ego and Its Own, about the risks involved in a struggle for emancipation that is conducted on a supra-individual level, within the frame of an abstract social category. The ‘spooks’, as he defined them, of abstractions such as Humanity, Country or Ethnicity – but, equally, Revolution or Class – will always have the tendency to enslave those who fight in their name, ultimately turning their struggle for emancipation into a process of consolidation of their domineering, abstract existence. The concept of the Public as the only possible sphere for emancipatory action seems to fall exactly into this category of ‘spooks’. In fact, the Public is nothing but the other name of Society, that is, of the often forceful association of individuals underneath the flag of an arbitrary commonality. This is particularly evident with national, ethnic or identity-based societies, but it equally applies to populist discourses such as that of the 99%, as recently developed by the Occupy movement.

 

What would happen if an Italian refused to see him or herself as Italian? What if a homosexual man did not want to identify as part of the Gay community? What if a worker did not want to join a strike? What if a poor person did not want to be part of the 99%? In all these cases, we would be facing a case of treason. These types of traitors are not at all different, in their status, to army deserters: the individual who refuses to conduct his life and struggle within the pre-set terrain of one or the other abstract collectivity is met not only with the reprobation of those who believe in the abstraction, but with their active persecution.

 

However, this type of persecution is not like that traditionally unleashed against heretics. While an heretic is a partial traitor – who abandons one abstraction in favour of another – the deserter is an individual who disbelieves all collective abstractions. Upon abandoning one, he or she does not have another abstract ‘motherland’ to find refuge in. Revealingly, centuries after their execution, heretics are often rewarded with statues and honours by the very same Societies that killed them, in the name of a newly found respect or tolerance for their ‘other’ set of values. For disbelievers, on the other hand, no statues are ever erected: we might have seen a monument dedicated to the soldiers who fought against our Nation in past eras, but have we ever seen a monument for the deserters of our army?

 

The possibility of treason of the individual – or, to be more exact, the constant treason of the individual as such – derives from the relationship of obedience and faithfulness between a collectivity gathered around a common idea, and its central abstraction. Such collectivities are by nature religious groups, which find the reason for their unity – and the meaning of individual lives of their members –in the common worshipping of their ideal flag. Every relationship between the members of these collectivities, between them and those of another, or even between them and themselves, are mediated by this abstract third element, which constantly functions both as an element of reference and as a filter. This is particularly evident in the case of people who identify as Jewish, while defining themselves as atheists, or, in some parts of northern Ireland, those who identify at the same time as Catholics and atheists. This co-existence of apparently mutually exclusive definitions is made possible by the actual coincidence of Religion, Ethnicity and Society: they all share the same circular shape, gathered around a ‘third’, abstract core.

 

The importance of this third element in today’s world, and its seemingly universal and uncritical acceptance, is exemplarily testified by the discourse over multiculturalism. Both in its positive declinations and in those that oppose it, such a discourse revolves around the understanding of ‘culture’ as the inescapable filter through which individuals can be understood within Society – and can understand themselves. The apparent benevolence of multiculturalism towards individuals is indissolubly bound to their belonging to an abstract set of values – or culture – which defines the core of one or the other collectivity. For all those who wish to escape cultures tout-court, as for those who do not fit into the passport system of nationalities, nothing else remains but a state of bare life.

 

Like the universal space of culture, the Public – or the Publics – is a religious terrain in which individuals are bound together by a common oath. The object of their oath might vary according to different situations, but it is always present: it might be the sitting and silence of a theatre audience, the style and dancing of a club crowd, the informed indignation of the public opinion, the position of shared ownership of those to whom the commons are supposed to belong, etcetera. As in every church, also in that of the Public the members are called to respect specific sets of rules, and see their membership in immediate peril the moment they transgress any of them. This is, for example, what happens on social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook: users who do not respect the founding oath of the collectivity there congregated – for example, by posting racist comments – are to face, not only the expulsion by the hands of the platform managers, but an active persecution from all the other members.

 

Here, the Public reveals its deep relationship with another, collective frame of action and communication: the crowd. Like the Open Crowd, as described by Elias Canetti in Crowds and Power, the Public knows no boundaries and aims at its continuous expansion. As long as it expands, the Public continues to exist, unthreatened. The moment its expansion ends, it begins disintegrating. Within this process, the Public, like a crowd, aims at entering each and every closed space, and to win over or annihilate anyone who stands in its way: everything should be public, everyone should be part of the Public. Also like crowds, the Public finds the moment of its pinnacle – the ‘discharge,’ in Canetti’s parlance – through acts of destruction. In fact, the always highly praised process of public criticism – which, incidentally, is hardly ever a constructive moment – is the particular denomination of the destructive moment of the ‘discharge’ within the specific crowd of the Public. Since the substance of its crowd is made of often virtual voices – as it appears particularly evident on the internet – the destruction of the moment of its discharge is equally virtual: the fire of the comments sections of a newspaper’s website, rather than the physical fire that flesh-and-blood crowds set on newspapers’ buildings.

 

Seen under this perspective, the emancipatory horizon proposed by the Public, like that offered by crowd-politics, too closely resembles the crushing heel underneath which individuals have been ground since the beginning of Civilization. The movement of the Public, like that of churches or states, crowds or political parties, is a circular motion revolving around itself. An endless dance around an ideal totem. The illusion of a movement maintained at the cost of countless lives, spent working hard at worshipping abstract flags. What kind of emancipation has the Public to offer, to the fragile, mortal lives of the individuals?

 

The Private and Capitalism

 

The second assumption at the basis of the historical misunderstanding of the passage between 1970s and 1980s in Italy has to do with the relationship between the sphere of the private and Capitalism.

 

As briefly discussed above, it is now widely accepted, both on the right and on the left wing of the political spectrum, that Capitalism is the ultimate guardian of the private sphere and of the interests of the individual. If individualism was to be placed politically and economically, today’s consensus would undoubtedly identify it as a philosophical protectorate of Capitalism. Of course, the advocates of Capitalism do not miss a chance to claim their supposed focus on the dynamics and needs of the individuals. From advertising to financial services, the entire discourse of Capitalism seems to speak directly to the individual. At the same time, Capitalism pretends to do without ideologies and abstract ‘spooks’, which it dismisses as typical of antiquated 20th century politics. But is this really the case?

 

Much has already been said and written about the ideology of Capitalism, among others by thinkers such as Mark Fisher or Slavoj Zizek. Clearly, Capitalism maintains an ideological vision of itself, an abstract conception of the individual and a set of abstract, fixed values which it defines as its own culture. There is no need to discuss this any further. What, however, has rarely been noticed, is how Capitalism systematically fails at maintaining its actual focus on the individual, despite its claims of doing so. If individualism was to be placed politically and economically, it would certainly escape the Capitalist system as if it was a plague. In order to unfold this statement, we should examine the status of the individual within the Capitalist system, as opposed to what could be their state of freedom and autonomy.

 

The most immediate point from which to begin this observation is undoubtedly the work regime. After centuries of technological development, dearly paid by generation after generation of workers and slaves, in an age in which machinery has virtually taken over from humans in the production of goods and of most services, the problem of work still hangs above us as the most threatening Damocles’ sword. Not only the amount of hours spent working by a person throughout his or her life has constantly increased in the last decades – and has no likelihood to decrease any time soon – but the state of being out of work is still perceived and experienced as a state of utter minority, surrounded by the disapproval of others and by one’s individual poverty. What has the so-called ‘development’ of the last five centuries been for, if its maintenance seems to require at least as much effort as its construction?

 

Even more evidently, Capitalism attempts at the individual’s interests by imposing work as an end in itself for a person’s life. This is the spook of a career, the ‘must’ of one’s ambition, to be fulfilled at work. As Charles Bukowski precisely put it in Factotum, ‘it was true that I didn't have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?’ Ironically, as it has become apparent in recent years, the promise of a career has increasingly taken the grotesque traits of a typical 20th century metanarrative: a promise that, apart from its meagerness, is not even delivered. Interestingly, if traditional metanarratives were the opium of the masses, Capitalism is able to sustain its own crumbling promises only through the intensive use of anti-depressant and anxiolytic drugs of its subjects.

 

But the self-referentiality of Capitalism’s work regime, and its disregard for the individual, becomes even more apparent if we compare the supposed usefulness of what is produced to the cost that the individual worker has to bear in order to produce it. How can we understand the relationship between the blindness caused to workers by sandblasters, and the outcome of tacky, fake-faded jeans? Where is the relationship of necessity, between the leukemia caused to workers by the use of chemical dyes and the outcome of horrendous, green, frog-shaped slippers to be sold in gift shops? If we take the ‘worker’ definition off the working person, it is the individual – and a great number of them – who suffers under the rule of Capitalist work.

 

Similarly, it is on the individual poor, and not on the abstract name of ‘the poor’, that the poverty caused by Capitalism falls. It is the individual biological creature, and not on the  abstract definition of ‘nature’, that is poisoned and ripped apart by the ‘collateral damages’ of Capitalist production. It is the individual mind, and not the totem of the Public, which is polluted by the overpowering flow of information-noise spread by all Capitalist media. And it is against the individual that Capitalism throws its ever-changing discourse on identity, self-worthiness and recognition. Only in so far as an individual accepts to identify with one or the other model available – occasionally called markets, tribes, subcultures, etc – or volunteers to create a new one, he or she will be the object of Capitalism’s benevolent attention. In other words, it is only in so far as the individual ceases to be an individual and enters one or another of the Publics of Capitalism, he or she will be a good capitalist individual. There is nothing ‘personal’ or ‘private’ in the regime of Capitalism: everything is Public, under the sleepless eye of Capital.

 

Furthermore, it would be erroneous to consider Capitalism as an autonomous system, which does not necessitate of the aid of other, innately public and anti-individualistic organizations, such as the State. Capitalism and the State play an endless game of bad-cop/good-cop, alternatively punching or caressing the individual’s head. What one takes away from the individual, the other appears to offer, until yet again they swap roles in their dance. And at the center of their minuet stays the Public, under its various names and declinations: it is all together that we must obey the State, all together we must work for the good of Capital. All together we should observe, comment, progress or rebel, so that all together we will once again be submitted to a new, universal system. Both the regime of the State and that of Capitalism are based on universal communication: their discourses must reach everyone, and everyone must respond to them, no matter if positively of negatively. The Public must always pay attention, it must be alert, and possibly must use the little energy left after a day of exhausting, pointless work to contribute his or her opinion to the exhausting, pointless debate.

 

Laze Biosas

 

In the face of the all-reaching ambitions of the Public, what is an individual to do? Certainly, no individual is ever in the position to tell another what is to be done. Thus, it is to myself that I address this question: what am I to do, in the face of the Public?

 

If the Public is a measureless, insatiable mouth, eternally hunting through the deserts and cities of the world for ever more prey, I should tell myself to ‘live in hiding’ – laze biosas, as Epicurus succinctly put it. To hide oneself from the mouth of the Public means, first of all, to shield one’s eyes from the eyes of the Public. Not to return the gaze that the Public casts on one. Like Medusa, the Public’s stare is powerful and terrible enough to transform any individual into yet another lifeless rock, in the stone garden of Society. Every stone indistinguishable from the other, devoid of any sound until it clangs against another, in the circular avalanche of opinions.

 

To hide from the Public means to withdraw from the communal cult of abstractions that keeps us together. To break away from the religion of sacrifice which sees representation as the only way to existence: either the physical representation of certain types of politics, or the semiotics of a life lived in the name of something ‘bigger than oneself’. To hide from the Public thus means to do without the type of meaning that finds its strength and justification in the volume of its reflections on the glass-like skin of rock-hard individuals. Those hiding from the Public offer themselves as opaque surfaces, who don’t illuminate anything and anyone around them with the same light they had cast upon themselves. Such individuals refuse to become relay stations of the Public cult of their shared names.

 

However, hiding from the Public does not mean shying away from any contacts or conflicts with others, or with Society. Like wolves hiding in the forest, individuals might feel the need or desire to walk through the farmland, laugh at the guard dogs and possibly steal some of their food. They might want to enter in conflict with Society or with others, or occasionally in opportunistic alliance with them. Such individuals might want to do so together with others like them. Like the Jivaros natives of Ecuador, who famously live far apart from each other and congregate only in the occasion of a war expedition, such grouping might be only temporary and for a specific purpose. These expeditions will resemble those of the sluagh, the multitudes of spirit of the Scottish Highlands, which, expelled forever from the world of the apparently-living, return to haunt their dreams and pillage their homes in a state of apparent-death.

 

These collectives of people in hiding, like the ‘unions of egoists’ discussed by Max Stirner, are the furthest possible things from the creation of a Society or of a Public. Differently from Society, they have no ambition of setting themselves as permanent institutions, which would eventually take over the individual lives of their members. Differently from the Public, they do not have the shape of a circle of people, gathered around the shared hallucination of a central abstraction. The core and reason of such groupings is simply the achievement of the aims of their members – something which has hardly anything to do with the couch-bound passivity of the Public of a spectacle, or with the tragic run of headless chickens of the Public of societal politics.

 

Living in hiding from the cheap gods of Society and of the Public, one has the opportunity of unveiling the hidden reality of a godless, merciless world, in which life ends in death, with no possibility of return or immortality. For those who are to die, no time is left for the childish worshipping of any masters, and particularly not of invisible ones. They have no time to build totems and bow their heads in front of them.

 

Once awakened to their mortality, individuals are also awakened to the urgency of joy in their life. Hence the importance of friendship, for those who hide, of beauty, of pleasure and excess: no abstraction or fiction can take joy on their behalf, as it is happens with the self-sacrificing members of Society and of the Public. What is lost to them is lost forever, with no ‘greater good’ or invisible audience clapping hands to ease their pain. What is available to them must be grabbed at once, and at once devoured. Little matters if in doing so one does not respects the rules of a culture, or the capricious requests of one of the countless gods.

 

For those who are to die, for those in hiding from the gods, there is no time for a communication that does not have the consistency of the flesh. They do not represent, they do not have opinions: representation and opinions are the stuff gods are made of. Whenever they speak, they describe a plan. Whenever they stop talking, they put it in practice. And whenever they act, they do not expect to be thanked: indeed, ‘the pleasure is all theirs’. They do not indulge in any form of altruism, not out of hatred for others, but out of love for themselves. They are all they can ever have, and so they believe it to be true for others.

 

This is the true meaning, and the true practice of emancipation.