The Discovery Of A Malign Host: Anxiety and Work

I would like to discuss anxiety and its relationship with work today, from a philosophical perspective. I will examine anxiety as connected to the problem of hospitality, and particularly to broken hospitality, then I will explore the changes that the traditional concept of hospitality has undergone under the current condition of Nihilism. It will be in the field of Nihilism that I will explore the connections between anxiety and contemporary work. Finally, I will try to look for a philosophical alternative.

Before starting, I must acknowledge two debts. Most of the first part of this talk derives from a conversation I had with my friend and fellow writer Robert Prouse, whom I would like to thank. The final part of this talk, on the other hand, has been very influenced by the poet Lucy Mercer, and I would like to thank her for that.

 

 

Environmental malaise / existere

 

So, anxiety. Although anxiety takes place in the thoughts and sensations of an individual person, I believe that it can be described as an environmental malaise. That is, a malaise whose roots reach into the world outside of the individual, and which tells us more about this external world than it tells us about the sufferer. From the perspective of the anxious person, the world around him/her undergoes a transformation, or possibly a disclosure: the world reveals itself as a hostile environment, where a threat is hidden behind every corner. Anything that could have potentially welcomed a person now shuts its doors, while at the same time trapping the person within its hostile territory – a form of exclusion/imprisonment which is simultaneously defensive and threatening, similarly to our contemporary securitarian ideology.

In a word, the world presents itself to the anxious person as unwelcoming. The anxious person traverses it as if clandestinely, and s/he can clearly feel that his/her existential position in it is that of the trespasser.

S/he can also feel the presence of an invisible, malign host, whose face is only revealed as purely dark hostility. [Often, today’s anxious society mistakes the malignity of the host – hidden within things – with these things themselves: this can at least in part explain the resentment that seems to pervade today’s destructive fury against anything that exists, and particularly against the so-called natural environment (i.e. badgers in Britain) – as if by destroying all its possible material vessels we were somehow able to destroy this invisible, malign host]

 

There is an undeniable certainty to the feeling of anxiety. Perhaps, this is due to the fact that the condition of trespasser is deeply connected to the experience of existence. Already etymologically, existence reveals this connection: the Latin word existere literally means ‘to stand outside’. Existing is thus being exposed to an outside, to a world which does not belong to us and to which we don’t belong. The threat of being classified existentially as a trespasser is thus implicit in our very existence.

 

 

The guest / hospitality / the Odyssey

 

But the figure of the trespasser is not the only one available to us. If we look at traditional cultures, such as those of ancient Greece and of medieval Christianity (especially in its Byzantine and Russian orthodox incarnation) we can find an alternative, existential position: that of the guest.

 

An example of the centrality of the notion of hospitality and of the sacredness of the relationship guest/host can already be found in the Homeric epic. The Iliad begins with a betrayal of hospitality (Paris kidnapping Helen while he was Menelaus’s guest in Sparta) which causes a ten-years’ war, while the Odyssey explores in almost each of its pages the possible declinations of hospitality – to the point that it’s possible to consider hospitality, rather than travel, as its central theme. In the Odyssey, the failure to act as a proper host is the mark of the worst characters: Circe, who humiliates her guests by turning them into beasts, Polyphemus the Cyclops who feasts on them, the lotus eaters who make them forget their homeland (thus erasing their status of guests), and even the nymph Calypsos, who keeps Odysseus with her for seven years. Polyphemus, above all, embodies the figure of the bad host, and here resides his monstrous nature: he is not a monster because of his strange features, but because he fails his role as a host.

On the other hand, the figure of the good host is embodied by Nausicaa and her father Alcinous, the Phaeacian king, as they rescue a naked, shipwrecked Odysseus and shower him with care and gifts. Indeed, after the prologue on Telemachus, the epic of Odysseus proper begins with them, as if only in an environment in which hospitality is revered, poetry could arise [perhaps for the same reason, Adorno famously wrote that poetry was impossible after Auschwitz]. We will see later how this relationship between hospitality and poetry can be fundamental to a possible philosophical alternative to Nihilism.

 

 

Theoxenia

 

The theme of hospitality as a central existential category (that is, not simply as a social norm, but as a concept at the heart of our very existence in the world) runs uninterrupted from Greek antiquity to the Christian Middle Ages. Its common thread is the notion of theoxenia: the phenomenon by which a god arrives disguised as a wondering stranger and tests our hospitality. Indeed, the very word xenos both means stranger and guest, as if the two notions could not be separated (incidentally, it would be interesting to see how this would reflect, by Greek standards, on the current policies on immigration of the UK border agency and of the large British electorate supporting Ukip).

 

Theoxeniadevelops in Christianity as the relationship of hospitality which God not only requires of His creatures, but which He also bestows on them.

In Christianity, God is not just the protector of guests (as it was already the case in Greek mythology with Zeus Xenios or Philoxenon) but He is also the ultimate host, who extends His hospitality to all that exists.

This coincidence between the God-creator and the ultimate host might also be understood as one of the fundamental dimensions of all myths of the origins or cosmogonies, since they function as an attempt to clarify for each culture who is the ultimate host, that is, who is the entity that ultimately grants and protects the rights of hospitality and the existential conditions of living creatures as ‘sacred guests’ in the world.

 

Under the protection of God, nobody is a trespasser, while everybody is equally a xenos, that is, a stranger and a guest. As Hugh of Saint Victor remarked in the 12th century (in a passage much loved by Edward Said): “The person who finds his homeland sweet is a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign place.”

 

 

Charisma /gold / light

 

As the ultimate host, and in accordance to the traditional notion of hospitality, God is thus bound to provide his guests with all that they need, and to shower them with gifts. The burden of proof of accomplished hospitality is on the host (not the guest, who ‘always already’ deserves it) and gifts are often used as such proof. This is also the case with God, who bestows His gifts on His creatures as proof of His hospitality, thus implying that the structure and duties of hospitality stand on a higher level than that of God himself, since it rules his actions. This means, according to our reading of hospitality as the fundamental category which structures the very existence of everything in the world, that an ontology of hospitality was implicitly considered as superior to the ontology of God and to theology.

 

But back to the gifts. Gifts, charisma (plur, charismata) are a central concept in medieval and particularly in Orthodox Christianity (we shouldn’t forget that for most of the middle ages, and particularly until the great Schism of the 11th century, the centre of Christianity was located not in the West, but in the East: not in Rome but in Byzantium). The orthodox, theological idea of the gift finds its expression in the visual representation of the most important and most symbolic of God/Host’s gifts: the gift of light.

 

As noted by the great Russian art historian Pavel Floresnsky, the gold background typical of early Russian icons is meant to signify just this: gold as pure light, and pure light as a symbolic, absolute ‘yes’ both to the existence of the images it surrounds (thus granting a full ontological confirmation to the existence of Christ, the Virgin, the saints etc), but also – by overflowing the borders of the artwork – to the existence of its viewers.

Despite their lack of realism, one of the fundamental characteristics of Russian icons – according to the orthodox doctrine – is that they depict the truth exactly as it is. On the one hand, this explains their repetitive character (if the Virgin really looked that way, what would be the point of changing it? See the icon known as Theotokos of Vladimir, which was believed to have been painted by Saint Luke himself as a direct, real-life portrait of the Virgin and Child), and the importance of the coincidence of Sanctity and art in Andrej Rublev. On the other hand this explain why the gold-coated world of the icon is supposed to represent the world as it really is: a world in which we remain strangers and guests, but in which hospitality is granted and our position is sacred and protected. This is also reflected in the complete lack of shadows in Russian icons, which finds its precedent in the figurations on ancient Greek pottery, where, despite the skills of the artist, shadows are always banished.

In both Greek and Orthodox culture, we, as guests, deserve all that sacred guests deserve, and the balance of forces – in accordance to traditional hospitality – is in our favour, since the guest is (or should be) always allowed a position of power towards the host.

 

 

Nihilism / uncanny host

 

After this discussion of antiquity, it is time to move closer to our era. An era, as we all know since the days of Turgenev and Nietzsche, which is characterised by the kingdom of Nihilism. While defining it synthetically as ‘the devaluation of all values’, Nietzsche also famously described Nihilism as ‘the uncanniest of guests’ knocking on our door. Yet, in the light of our previous discussion of hospitality, it might be also possible to reverse Nietzsche’s definition and declare contemporary nihilism not as the uncanniest of guests, but rather as the uncanniest of hosts.

It is exactly this uncanny (g)host that which the anxious person today confronts and discovers, hidden in everything. Here lies the value of anxiety as a moment of epiphany.

 

Indeed, it would be possible, and perhaps important, to attempt reading our contemporary era under the lens of the issue of hospitality. Despite Nihilism and the supposed death of God, an ultimate host still exists today – and this is the revelation of the state of anxiety – yet he has broken all the rules of traditional, sacred hospitality.

Instead of the light of gold, he offers us the dark matter of financial capitalism, which, contrary to gold, functions as a symbolic ‘no’ to the existence of all that it touches. (there is an interesting reading of the metaphysical implications of gold vs financial currency in Ernst Junger’s work, especially Eumeswil and Heliopolis).

 

While the traditional, ultimate host could have been identified with the Zoroastrian benevolent Lord of light, Ahura Mazda, the uncanny host of today resembles instead the Lord of Darkness, Angra Mainyu.

 

Particularly, the apocalypse of the notion of hospitality can be witnessed in today’s neoliberal and austerity policies, and especially in the current British obsession with benefits scroungers. The uncanny host retains possession over the ontological substratum of existence, yet it no longer accords the status of ‘sacred guests’ to the beings that exist in the world. They – we – are no longer worthy guests, but unworthy trespassers.

They – we – no longer deserve anything, but they constantly have to prove their worthiness.

 

 

Conqueror and trespasser / Technic

 

The disappearance of the figure of the guest leaves room for the appearance of two different, existential figures: that of the trespasser, as we have seen, and that of the conqueror.

In accordance to the cruel, Protestant spirit, there is no forgiveness for humans, but they have a chance to gain a temporary right to existence by constantly proving their worthiness through constant acts of conquest. Within the perspective of the era of Technic (which already Junger and Heidegger identified as the zenith, or ground zero, of Nihilism), conquest expresses itself both as a merciless employment of what we define as nature (turning it to a ‘standing reserve’, Heidegger) [incidentally, the absence of landscapes in gold icons doesn’t mean that the natural environment doesn’t exist, but rather that the natural environment doesn’t exist as such, as separated from the rest. Everything is surrounded by gold, because nothing is landscape. There is no landscape because everything is equally a sacred guest – humans, animals, plants and rocks alike], and particularly, or perhaps primarily, through work.

 

As Junger noted as early as 1932 in Der Arbeiter, work acquires today a fundamental dimension: it is what defines and ontologically founds our existence. If we don’t work in accordance to the requirements of Technic, we can no longer claim to really exist. And if conquest/work fails – if we don’t work, or not enough, or not passionately enough – from conquerors we immediately turn into trespassers, and we are revealed in our unworthiness. Hence the reason for such an axious relationship with employment: it is the anxious relationship with the very un-sacredness of our existence.

 

Our existence is thus constantly precarious, not only because its status is fragile and fleeting but also because, etymologically, precariousness means ‘to rely on prayers’ (praecis). In the nihilist world the ultimate host (which once upon a time was God) is not disappeared but has turned into Technic, and similarly prayers have not vanished but have turned into the repetitive, circular mantra of work (a mostly useless, unproductive, devastating work). Our existence is precarious because it depends on the endless repetition of this mantra.

 

It is for this reason that anxiety and work are so deeply, essentially related. The anxious person sees the truth of the world of work (that is, the whole of today’s world, which is a world of total work): a hostile world where our very existence is not granted, where we cannot do anything else (not poetry, not love etc) but frantically and endlessly trying to reproduce our own ontological and existential legitimacy. The anxious person sees work as the fundamental field of this ordeal, and thus often rightly associates the experience of anxiety (anxiety as unveiling the truth, which is the contemporary equivalent to medieval Christian ecstasy) with the experience of work.

 

 

A way out: poetic theoria

 

It would be tempting to conclude here, stopping at the merely diagnostic level, but I will attempt to move one step forward, trying to look for a possible, philosophical therapy to this very philosophical illness.

Indeed, we find ourselves stuck in a difficult position. On the one hand, we can’t realistically think of going back to traditional values, and probably we wouldn’t even want to, for good reason. Yet at the same time life under current conditions is unbearable. We can’t go back to the system of a prayer directed to a visible Host, yet we can barely survive the current system of circular work-mantra.

Is there a way out?

 

If there is a way out, it is a way which goes both beyond tradition and beyond Nihilism.

 

I believe that this has to be a poetic act. I say poetic, because poetry is perhaps the most suitable word to describe a form of contemplation of the world which is as passive as it is active, which reads the world as much as it writes it, and which cannot write it without reading it first. The poetic gaze recognises the existence of a world beyond language (a world in which we are strangers), but at the same time it applies itself as language onto that world, thus making it hospitable (and turning us into guests). The Greeks used to call a similar attitude theoria, referring in particular to the spectators of tragic plays, who would be able at the same time to read the existential subtext of the fictional play, while actively taking part to it and shaping it through their own existence.

Ernst Junger famously called this approach to reality a ‘stereoscopi gaze’, that is, a way of looking at the world simultaneously as surface (available to us as language) and as interior core (existing beyond language, while still approachable through myth).

 

This alliance of theoreticians and poets, of course, is nothing new, and it is well described by Junger in his book Over the Line: “Things are not different, today, for the thinker. His life is similarly daring, since he stands on the frontier of nothing [...] I am talking about the singular symmetry which places, today, the poet and the thinker in a mirroring relationship. [...] While through poetic action language bends into a spiritual sphere, like fertile ground, in the field of though it sinks its roots into the undifferentiated” (Oltre la linea, Adelphi, 100-101).

Applied to what we have discussed so far, and particularly to our existential position in the world, we can thus see the poetic attitude as the alternative both to the traditional, medieval or Dyonisian ecstasy, and to contemporary work-anxiety.

 

We can find traces of this attitude in Lucretius, and before him in Epicurus’ attitude to science. In his letter to Herodotus on natural science and in his letter to Phytocles on meteorology, Epicurus pointed out that the use of science is not that of providing a ‘true’ explanation of natural phenomena, but rather to act therapeutically on the human mind, to banish fear and anxiety from it.

Thus Epicurus wrote scientific texts in an eminently poetic manner: observing the world and condensing it into words that would be able to transform it into a welcoming space, where life would be allowed to flourish without fear over its very existence. His science wasn’t merely observational, nor merely domestic, but a light, self-aware, poetic combination of the two. I am talking of a form of both physics and metaphysics which considers life not only as the subject of its commission, but also its primary beneficiary.

 

This means both following Nietzsche in his destruction of tradition, but also moving beyond the violent alternative of his over-man, who casts his new values through fire. This also means learning the pagan lesson of Fernando Pessoa’s Alberto Caeiro (as he observed a world ‘with no inside’, that is, beyond language) and the metaphysical cynicism of Wallace Stevens (as he strives to look at things ‘as they merely are’), while at the same time complementing it with a light form of myth-making: the light myth-making of fables, at once aware of their fictional nature and yet capable of supporting entire life-narrations; rather than the heavy myth-making of totalitarian propaganda, either in its 20th century form, or in its contemporary capitalist form.

 

 

Guests again

 

This finally means to re-imagine our position in the world once again as that of the sacred guest. A position which is neither the destructive one of the conqueror, nor the miserable one of the trespasser, and which would allow us to escape the whirlpool of mere activity or mere passivity. This would require the creation, however fictional, of a new figure of the Host – yet we would create this new figure of the Host with the light-heartedness and the acumen of the poet.

This is where poetry takes politics and leads it by the hand – beyond the cruel indentitarianism of our age.

 

On the one hand, we would try to look at the world as it is – beyond the smoke curtain of the ever-pervasive language of Technic and of finance – and we would make it inhabitable to us through our use of thought and language – without turning it into a standing reserve and a field of merciless exploitation.

On the other hand, we would bend to our advantage (ours: us as life) exactly that field of pure language and thought which is our social life. We would not find in social life any of that ontological truth which we can see in the world around us (social life is not ‘without an inside’ and it can never ‘merely be’, because it is indeed only an ‘inside’ created by thought and language, and it is exactly that which strip the being of it ‘mere-ness’). In fact, we would pay no respect to social life and its institutions as if they existed ‘in themselves’ – thus learning the lesson of Max Stirner – but we would entirely subjugate them to the role of tools of that condition of hospitality which we need to live and flourish.

 

Thus, we would never again talk of cutting benefits in the name of supposed work ethic, of excluding migrants from a portion of territory in the name of an abstract idea of nation, of ever considering a person ‘worthy’ of living fully and another one ‘unworthy’ in the name of a religion of meritocracy, of considering an endless humiliation the ‘honourable’ course of life (as it often demanded of the poor) in the name of a skewed vision of the market as a new God, and so on. This means salvaging the concept of the ‘welfare state’ only in reference to its element of welfare, while doing without the false ontology of the state.

 

If we manage to do this, I believe, we will have learnt the lesson of anxiety and we will have turned it to good use. Not to go back to the revelations of traditional ecstasy, but to adapt all that there was of good in the traditional concept of life ‘as if without shadows’ (like in Greek vases or Russian icons) and to move it to a plane where poetry leads politics by the hand (and not the contrary) like a horse pulls a cart along, and in which our life, as well as the existence of all which exists (indeed, existence itself, as granted by the golden ‘yes’ of absolute light) is the only passenger and the only subject of the journey.