Baudrillard, "The Agony of Power" (or why Critical Theory is Ineffective)

Only evil can speak evil now.  Evil is a ventriloquist.

Jean Baudrillard, "The Agony of Power"

Contrary to domination, a hegemony of world power is no longer a dual, personal, or real form of domination, but the domination of networks, of calculation, and integral exchange. Domination can be overthrown from the outside, hegemony can only be inverted or reversed from the inside. They are two different, and almost contrary paradigms....

...Domination and hegemony are separated by the liquidation of reality. The superfast eruption of late of a global principle of simulation, a global hold by the virtual, globalization is the hegemony of a global power and can only occur in the framework of the virtual and the networks with the homogeneity that comes from signs, empty of their substance.

The entire western masquerade relies on the cannibalization of reality by signs, or of a culture by itself. I use cannibalize here in the derivative sense of cannibalizing a car, using it as spare parts, cannibalizing a culture as we do it today means "tinkering with its' values like spare parts, in as much as the entire system is out of order.

This distinction between domination and hegemony is crucial. It determines the forms of resistance appropriate for each, and the various ways in which the present situation could evolve.

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In the face of this hegemony, the work of the negative, the work of critical thought, of the relationship of forces against oppression, or of radical subjectivity against alienation, all this has virtually become obsolete.

It has become obvious that thanks to the twists and turns of cynical reason, or the ruses of history, this new hegemonic configuration, which is no longer the hegemony of capital, has absorbed the negative, negativity as a way of regaining the initiative. Caught in a vast Stockholm Syndrome, the alienated, the oppressed, and the colonized are siding with the system that holds them hostage. They are now annexed, in the literal sense, prisoners of the nexus of the network. Connected, for better or worse, power has ransacked all of the strategies of simulation... parody, irony, and self-mockery, leaving the Left with only a phantom of the truth. The famous slogan for the Banque Naccional de Paris, BMP in the late 70's, comes to mind. "Your money interests me". This statement encapsulates the ignominy of capital far better than any critical analysis denouncing capital and all of the banking mechanisms was nothing new. The scandalous feature was that the banker himself had said it. Truth coming out of the mouth of evil. It wasn't a denunciation, a critical analysis, it came from the dominant power and enjoyed complete immunity. It could admit its' crime in broad daylight.

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This discourse of the universal describes a tautological spiral. It is held by the species that considers itself superior to all others and within this species by a minority that considers itself the holder of moral and universal ends forming a veritable democratic feudality. Whatever the case may be there is a major inconsistency with continuing to use a discourse of the universal and a discourse of reference when it has no meaning or effect anywhere, neither with global power, nor in opposition to it, to relativize our concept of the universal with the increasing globalization of the world, discrimination becomes more ferocious. The cartography should not confuse these zones beyond reality with those that still give signs of reality in the same hegemonic of globalization. Even though they do not function in the same way we could even say that the gap separating them is growing, and that something that was only a cultural singularity in a non-unified world becomes real discrimination in a globalized universe. The more the world is globalized, the worse the discrimination. The two universes, the hyper real and the infra real (below or within the real) seem to interpenetrate, but are light years away from each other. The deepest misery and enclaves of luxury coexist in the same geographic space.

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“Absorbing the negative continues to be the problem. When the emancipated slave internalizes the master, the work of the negative is abolished. Domination becomes hegemony. Power can show itself positively and overtly in good conscience and complete self-evidence. It is unquestionable and global. But the game is not over yet. For while the slave internalizes the master, power also internalizes the slave who denies it, and it denies itself in the process. Negativity reemerges as irony, mocking the auto-liquidation internal to power. This is how the slave devours and cannibalizes the Master from the inside. As power absorbs the negative, it is devoured by what it absorbs. There is justice in reversibility.”

A catastrophic dialectic has replaced the work of the negative. Critical thought, or any attempt to attack the system from the inside is in a complete aporia after voluntary servitude, which was the secret key to exercising domination, One could now speak instead of involuntary complicity, consensus, and connivance with the world order by everything that seems to oppose it. Images, even radical critical ones, are still part of the crime they denounce, albeit, an involutionary one. 

What is the impact of a film like "Darwin's Nightmare," which denounces racial discrimination in Tanzania? It will tour the Western world and reinforce the endogamy, the cultural and political autarky of this separate world through images, and the consumption of images. And yet by the same token all critical negativity, all the work of the negative is abolished, devoured by signs and simulacra. 

In the context of hegemony, the historical work of critical thought, the relationship of forces against oppression, radical subjectivity, of alienation, are all virtually in the past simply because this new hegemonic configuration, which is no longer the configuration of capitalism at all, has itself absorbed the negative and used it for a leap forward through the meanders of cynical reasoning or the tricks of history. 

The absolute negative, terrorism, internal deterrence responds to the absolute positive of positivitized power. When domination becomes hegemony negativity becomes terrorism. Thus hegemony is a metastable form because it has absorbed the negative. But by the same token, lacking the possibility of dialectical balance, it remains infinitely fragile. Its' victory, therefore, is only apparent, and its total positivity, this resorption of the negative, anticipates its own dissolution. It is therefore both the twilight of critical thought and the agony of power. 

Through a reverse effect however the system enters a catastrophic dialectic, but this dialectic is a far cry from the Marxist dialectic. And the teleological role of negation for this strategy of development and growth is fatal as it entirely fulfills itself in a final achievement that no negativity can hinder. 

It becomes incapable of surpassing itself upwards and initiates a process of self-annihilation. For this strategy of development and growth is fatal as it entirely fulfills itself in a final achievement that no negativity can hinder. It becomes incapable of surpassing itself upwards auf heim and initiates a process of self-annihilation al-faheb. 

In the sense of dissolution for the system in the context of global power, this strategy of development and growth is fatal. The system cannot prevent its destiny from being accomplished, integrally realized, and therefore driven into automatic self-destruction by the ostensible mechanisms of its reproduction. 

Its shape is similar to what is called turbo capitalism. The term turbo should be taken literally. In this expression it means that the system as a whole is no longer driven by historical forces, but is absorbed by its final conditions, hastened to its definitive end like a turbo engine sucking in the space in front of it, creating a vacuum and the force of attraction of a vacuum. It is not a progressive continuous evolution even if it is confrontational and contradictory. Instead it is a vertiginous, here irresistible, attraction to its own end. 

If negativity is totally engulfed by the system, if there is no more work of the negative, positivity sabotages itself in its completion. At the height of its hegemony, power cannibalizes itself and the work of the negative is replaced by an immense work of mourning. 

We can even forget about capital and capitalism. Didn't they reach the point where they would destroy their own conditions of existence? Can we still speak of a market or even of a classical economy? 

In its historical definition capitalism presided over the multiplication of exchanges. Under the auspices of value the market obeys the law of value and equivalency, and the crisis of capital can always be resolved by regulating value. This is no longer true, for the financial flows and international speculations that far surpass the laws of the market. 

Can we still speak of capital when faced with an exponential strategy that pushes capital beyond its limits? In a whirlwind of exchanges where it loses its very essence and is dispersed in an unbridled circulation that brings the very concept of exchange to an end? 

Having lost its' rational principle, the principle of value, exchange becomes total, just as reality, having lost its reality principle, becomes total reality. It may be the fatal destination of capital to go to the end of exchange toward total consumption of reality. In any case we are bound for this generalized exchange this frenetic communication and information that is the sign of hegemony.

The dimension of hegemony is different from that of capital and different from the dimension of power in its strictly political definition. It is no longer a question of political power tied to a history and a form of representation.

Representation itself has lost its principle and the democratic illusion is complete, not through the violation of rights, but through the simulation of values and the derealization of all reality. The masquerade again everyone caught in the signs of power and communing in the rigged unfolding of the political stage.

— The Agony of Power // J. Baudrillard