Nihilism no longer wears the dark, Wagnerian, Spenglerian, fuliginous colors of the end

Nihilism no longer wears the dark, Wagnerian, Spenglerian, fuliginous colors of the end
of the century. It no longer comes from a Weltanschauung of decadence nor from a
metaphysical radicality born of the death of God and of all the consequences that must be
taken from this death. Today's nihilism is one of transparency, and it is in some sense
more radical, more crucial than in its prior and historical forms, because this
transparency, this irresolution is indissolubly that of the system, and that of all the theory
that still pretends to analyze it. When God died, there was still Nietzsche to say so - the
great nihilist before the Eternal and the cadaver of the Eternal. But before the simulated
transparency of all things, before the simulacrum of the materialist or idealist realization
of the world in hyperreality (God is not dead, he has become hyper-real), there is no
longer a theoretical or critical God to recognize his own.

The universe, and all of us, have entered live into simulation, into the malefic, not even
malefic, indifferent, sphere of deterrence: in a bizarre fashion, nihilism has been entirely
realized no longer through destruction, but through simulation and deterrence. From the
active, violent phantasm, from the phantasm of the myth and the stage that it also was,
historically, it has passed into the transparent, falsely transparent, operation of things.
What then remains of a possible nihilism in theory? What new scene can unfold, where
nothing and death could be replayed as a challenge, as a stake?

We are in a new, and without a doubt insoluble, position in relation to prior forms of
nihilism:

Romanticism is its first great manifestation: it, along with the Enlightenment's
Revolution, corresponds to the destruction of the order of appearances.

Surrealism, dada, the absurd, and political nihilism are the second great manifestation,
which corresponds to the destruction of the order of meaning.

The first is still an aesthetic form of nihilism (dandyism), the second, a political,
historical, and metaphysical form (terrorism).

These two forms no longer concern us except in part, or not at all. The nihilism of
transparency is no longer either aesthetic or political, no longer borrows from either the
extermination of appearances, nor from extinguishing the embers of meaning, nor from
the last nuances of an apocalypse. There is no longer an apocalypse (only aleatory
terrorism still tries to reflect it, but it is certainly no longer political, and it only has one
mode of manifestation left that is at the same time a mode of disappearance: the media -
now the media are not a stage where something is played, they are a strip, a track, a
perforated map of which we are no longer even spectators: receivers).

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The apocalypse is finished, today it is the precession of the neutral, of forms of the neutral and of
indifference. I will leave it to be considered whether there can be a romanticism, an
aesthetic of the neutral therein. I don't think so - all that remains, is the fascination for
desertlike and indifferent forms, for the very operation of the system that annihilates us.
Now, fascination (in contrast to seduction, which was attached to appearances, and to
dialectical reason, which was attached to meaning) is a nihilistic passion par excellence,
it is the passion proper to the mode of disappearance. We are fascinated by all forms of
disappearance, of our disappearance. Melancholic and fascinated, such is our general
situation in an era of involuntary transparency.

I am a nihilist.

I observe, I accept, I assume the immense process of the destruction of appearances (and
of the seduction of appearances) in the service of meaning (representation, history,
criticism, etc.) that is the fundamental fact of the nineteenth century. The true revolution
of the nineteenth century, of modernity, is the radical destruction of appearances, the
disenchantment of the world and its abandonment to the violence of interpretation and of
history.

I observe, I accept, I assume, I analyze the second revolution, that of the twentieth
century, that of postmodernity, which is the immense process of the destruction of
meaning, equal to the earlier destruction of appearances. He who strikes with meaning is
killed by meaning.

The dialectic stage, the critical stage is empty. There is no more stage. There is no
therapy of meaning or therapy through meaning: therapy itself is part of the generalized
process of indifferentiation.

The stage of analysis itself has become uncertain, aleatory: theories float (in fact,
nihilism is impossible, because it is still a desperate but determined theory, an imaginary
of the end, a weltanschauung of catastrophe).*1

Analysis is itself perhaps the decisive element of the immense process of the freezing
over of meaning. The surplus of meaning that theories bring, their competition at the
level of meaning is completely secondary in relation to their coalition in the glacial and
four-tiered operation of dissection and transparency. One must be conscious that, no
matter how the analysis proceeds, it proceeds toward the freezing over of meaning, it
assists in the precession of simulacra and of indifferent forms. The desert grows.

Implosion of meaning in the media. Implosion of the social in the masses. Infinite growth
of the masses as a function of the acceleration of the system. Energetic impasse. Point of
inertia.

The masses themselves are caught up in a gigantic process of inertia through acceleration. They are this excrescent, devouring, process that annihilates all growth and all surplus meaning. They are this circuit short-circuited by a monstrous finality.

It is this point of inertia and what happens outside this point of inertia that today is
fascinating, enthralling (gone, therefore, the discreet charm of the dialectic). If it is
nihilistic to privilege this point of inertia and the analysis of this irreversibility of systems
up to the point of no return, then I am a nihilist.

If it is nihilistic to be obsessed by the mode of disappearance, and no longer by the mode
of production, then I am a nihilist. Disappearance, aphanisis, implosion, Fury of
Verschwindens. Transpolitics is the elective sphere of the mode of disappearance (of the
real, of meaning, of the stage, of history, of the social, of the individual). To tell the truth,
it is no longer so much a question of nihilism: in disappearance, in the desertlike,
aleatory, and indifferent form, there is no longer even pathos, the pathetic of nihilism -
that mythical energy that is still the force of nihilism, of radicality, mythic denial,
dramatic anticipation. It is no longer even disenchantment, with the seductive and
nostalgic, itself enchanted, tonality of disenchantment. It is simply disappearance.

The trace of this radicality of the mode of disappearance is already found in Adorno and
Benjamin, parallel to a nostalgic exercise of the dialectic. Because there is a nostalgia of
the dialectic, and without a doubt the most subtle dialectic is nostalgic to begin with. But
more deeply, there is in Benjamin and Adorno another tonality, that of a melancholy
attached to the system itself, one that is incurable and beyond any dialectic. It is this
melancholia of systems that today takes the upper hand through the ironically transparent
forms that surround us. It is this melancholia that is becoming our fundamental passion.

It is no longer the spleen or the vague yearnings of the fin-de-siecle soul. It is no longer
nihilism either, which in some sense aims at normalizing everything through destruction,
the passion of resentment (ressentiment).*2 No, melancholia is the fundamental tonality
of functional systems, of current systems of simulation, of programming and information.
Melancholia is the inherent quality of the mode of the disappearance of meaning, of the
mode of the volatilization of meaning in operational systems. And we are all
melancholic.

Melancholia is the brutal disaffection that characterizes our saturated systems. Once the
hope of balancing good and evil, true and false, indeed of confronting some values of the
same order, once the more general hope of a relation of forces and a stake has vanished.
Everywhere, always, the system is too strong: hegemonic.

Against this hegemony of the system, one can exalt the ruses of desire, practice
revolutionary micrology of the quotidian, exalt the molecular drift or even defend
cooking. This does not resolve the imperious necessity of checking the system in broad
daylight.

This, only terrorism can do.

It is the trait of reversion that effaces the remainder, just as a single ironic smile effaces a
whole discourse, just as a single flash of denial in a slave effaces all the power and pleasure of the master.

The more hegemonic the system, the more the imagination is struck by the smallest of its
reversals. The challenge, even infinitesimal, is the image of a chain failure. Only this
reversibility without a counterpart is an event today, on the nihilistic and disaffected
stage of the political. Only it mobilizes the imaginary.

If being a nihilist, is carrying, to the unbearable limit of hegemonic systems, this radical
trait of derision and of violence, this challenge that the system is summoned to answer
through its own death, then I am a terrorist and nihilist in theory as the others are with
their weapons. Theoretical violence, not truth, is the only resource left us

But such a sentiment is Utopian. Because it would be beautiful to be a nihilist, if there
were still a radicality - as it would be nice to be a terrorist, if death, including that of the
terrorist, still had meaning.

But it is at this point that things become insoluble. Because to this active nihilism of
radicality, the system opposes its own, the nihilism of neutralization. The system is itself
also nihilistic, in the sense that it has the power to pour everything, including what denies
it, into indifference.

In this system, death itself shines by virtue of its absence. (The Bologna train station, the
Oktoberfest in Munich: the dead are annulled by indifference, that is where terrorism is
the involuntary accomplice of the whole system, not politically, but in the accelerated
form of indifference that it contributes to imposing.) Death no longer has a stage, neither
phantasmatic nor political, on which to represent itself, to play itself out, either a
ceremonial or a violent one. And this is the victory of the other nihilism, of the other
terrorism, that of the system.

There is no longer a stage, not even the minimal illusion that makes events capable of
adopting the force of reality-no more stage either of mental or political solidarity: what
do Chile, Biafra, the boat people, Bologna, or Poland matter? All of that comes to be
annihilated on the television screen. We are in the era of events without consequences
(and of theories without consequences).

There is no more hope for meaning. And without a doubt this is a good thing: meaning is
mortal. But that on which it has imposed its ephemeral reign, what it hoped to liquidate in
order to impose the reign of the Enlightenment, that is, appearances, they, are immortal,
invulnerable to the nihilism of meaning or of non-meaning itself.

This is where seduction begins.

Spenger isn't a nihilist you fucking retard, read the last 3 passages of Man and Technics.

What does he mean by seduction?
I dont think he is saying Spengler is a nihilist

eh I get what he means about Spenglerian nihilism

What does it mean?

It is a strategy of indifference. Those who strike by meaning are killed by meaning. Unless you want to be killed by the very logic of the system that you seek to oppose, we must resist meaning. Theoretical violence, not truth, is the only resource left to us. The goal of theory for B is to make the world more unintelligible, more obscure. As soon as we enter into this domain of truth. the logic of the code, that wants to codify everything, is extended. But even theoretical violence falls short because such a sentiment would be utopian, because it would be beautiful to be a nihilist if there were still a radicality, as it would be nice to be a terrorist, if death, including that of the terrorist still has meaning, death has been denied its radicality What we are left with "This is where seduction begins," the only alternative is that of seduction, which is that which challenges the logic of the code.