taken from Ultrablack of Music
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Although it sounds as if it is a simple echo of the original German fascism, Nano-fascism is a reappropriation of fascism by Turkish Republic, which has given birth to an islamo-capitalist-Despotic-machine as a result of the redistribution of the Western and the Eastern capital into the monopoly of a Despot. As the reverberations of the fascist-rhythmo-capital expected to fade away in the concentration camps after the World War II, another conceptualisation of a rhythm-yet-to-come was being decided upon, already with ears tied to the transcendental fait accompli. If Hegel was the poison of the masses; then Heidegger, no matter how he battled with Western metaphysics, was the rhythmo-fascist-typography as Lacoue-Labarthe put so well in his »Transcendence Ends in Politics«.1
But first of all: Can we hear the rhythm? Does rhythm have a subject? Does the subject have a rhythm? Is it possible to approach rhythm without appropriation? Is it possible to formulate a concept of rhythm without falling into the determinations of an epistemology of subject? Is it possible to consider the heard and the unheard of rhythm without betraying them?2
Agamben, following the route designed by Heidegger, had proposed3 that, given the work of poiesis, one could expect to hear the rhythm of heavens, if s/he is armed with the famous quotation from Hölderlin: »Everything is rhythm, the entire destiny of man is one heavenly rhythm, just as every work of art is one rhythm, and everything swings from the poetizing lips of the god.«4
During the rise of German Nazism, it was obvious that the Führer, with »poiesis« in his mind, came to power by monopolizing the libido-rhythms, or the desiring-machine-rhythms of each and every political subject in the nation with the promise, that the national-machinic-rhythm once heard would be the secret force of dominating the whole world like the extensive power of a Wagnerian opera.
On the other hand, the way he managed this was much dependent upon the extent he would be able to dominate the ceasura between the subject of enunciation and the subject of enunciation so that his voice would not only be echoed within the radio loudspeakers, but also within the eardrums and tympanums of a whole nation, even when he is not speaking. Enunciation, in the first place, meant the prioritisation of »being uttered« over »uttering«; or, rather getting into resonance with a higher being as a result of which Führer’s ontological order would establish a transcendental subject on a macro level around which the uni-rhythmization of the subject would be executed. It was allowed to share in this rhythm insofar as one remained the subject of enunciation, that is, as long as one took part in the instrumentalization of sound via a new means of technology that would put one’s ears, eardrums and tympanum in resonance with an ur-rhythm emitted by the Despot.
Macro-Fascism Micro-Fascism Nano-Fascism
Micro-fascism, which is the continuation of macro-fascism into post-war era, took the form of an »authoritarian personality« which Adorno described so well in his book with the same title. In micro-facsicm, one did not need a Führer to dominate the ceasura between the subject of enunciation and the subject of enunciation because such a domination was already internalized and applied by the subject to itself. This of course not only pointed to the disappearance of the difference between »uttering« and »being uttered«, but also to a phase marked by a type of resonance, where there is no difference left between the source of vibration and another object getting into vibration with the source. Hence, the obliteration of resonance? No, on the contrary, it meant the universalisation of the micro-fascist-rhythm, where the subject disappeared for good, vibrating together with the inaudible rhythms, expected to be heard as »alethia« one day as conceptualised by Heidegger as well as Agamben. Resonance as the ur-transcendental. This internal-rhythm-machine of fascism, namely, the micro-fascist-rhythm-machine found expression also in Deleuze and Guattari’s works as the distinction between the molar and the molecular. In this phase, capitalism’s triumph lay in its ability to infuse the molecular by way of freeing the capital from a dependency on the economical, thereby creating pseudo-desiring-machines. It all meant an invitation to share the politics of ordinary daily life as long as one sacrificed the political, which is the preoccupation of the micro/molecular affinities of the subject of enunciation. That’s why Public Image Limited’s »Four Enclosed Walls« (Flowers of Romance, 1981) marked a period, when the audible rhythms of music went through a radical transformation so as to lay bare the roots of the audible within the structure of the fascist-rhythmo-capital, which was thought to have vanished long time ago.
But not only this. Allah! Allah!
The phase that I call nano-fascism is related to the appropriation of both macro and micro fascism by the non-western countries, such as Turkey. Tremendous amount of social, economic and political repression in this country since early 2000s is the oriental way of monopolizing national and global capital: Neanderthal Capitalism. In this process, Islam was the basic force by not allowing the privatization of the transcendental in contradistinction to Western constitutions based on the principle of laicism. The chant of Ezan on the one hand and the chiming church bells on the other. An authoritarian harmony on the one hand and the replica of the inaudible rhythm on the other, reminding much of Hölderlin’s search for a universal rhythm. Therefore, it is not surprising that in Islam rhythm is completely audible though it has only zero value and in contrast, harmony is made perfect per se. Imagine a Schubert song cycle – Die Winterreise, for example – where the piano score is exchanged with thousands of voice-accompaniments as the vocal line is saturated with the Despot’s voice passing through each and every believer in the same manner. A parody of what Deleuze meant with »univocity of being«, as it were. Resonance here acts as the immanent transcendental (in contrast to the ur-transcendental of micro-fascism), as a function of the Despot’s voice, and the latter is also the sole source of resonance. Actually, there is left only the source of resonance and among the rest is distributed nano-fascist-rhythms of the resonating source. In fact, they are not even expected to resonate with the source – they are born already in resonance with the source. It all means that the universalisation of the micro-fascist rhythm by way of the ur-transcendental of the micro-fasicsm is now rendered completely audible and nano-organic as a result of which, not only the distinction between subject of enunciation and the subject of enunciation is obliterated, but the distinction is made irrelevant with the rise of the voice of the Despot who appropriates all the attributes of the transcendental: pure »alethia«! A shamanistic ritual indeed where the shaman does not imitate or identifies with the evil spirit but becomes the evil spirit itself. Thus nano-fascism does not denote a state where fascist repression is organized by institutions on macro level, nor its internalization by the subject, but it denotes the fact that in nano-fascism one is born a nano-fascist. Being a product of neanderthal-capitalist-rhythm, the nano-fascist is the pre-individual singularity of pre-enlightenment: with no sense of individuation, s/he is always already enlightened; his/her world is dissolved into obedience without even knowing what obedience means. Otherwise, how can one explain the majority in Turkey who still votes for a Despot who murdered a huge number of people and confiscated the national capital together with his resona-jects?
In a closer look at what is happening today in the world, basically in the US and Europe, one can easily observe, how a European invention, »fascism«, has traveled across the borders between the West and the East, and having been transformed into nano- in Turkey, and is traveling back to its origin in a different colour and shape. Looking at the world agenda today from this perspective, it needs no further explanation that the good old repression machine of fascism has been re-invented recently in Turkey – nano-fascism of the islamo-capitalist-Despotic-machine – and, in the meanwhile, Turkey has been used as the laboratory of the West since the 80s in order to test to which extent human beings can bear heavy social, political and economic repressions. From this perspective, it won’t be too far to claim that this is actually why all these social, political and economic repressions and protests and uprisings are taking place, for example, in France, Greece, Italy, Germany, Spain and etc., despite the so-called Socialist/Liberalist governments. It is as if the governments everywhere are checking the possibility of applying the repressive mechanisms obtained from Turkish nano-fascism to their countries under the guidance of Turkish Neanderthal Capitalism. How to make the nano-fascist-rhythms audible is the real agenda of governments everywhere.
2. An Imaginary Report from a Victim of Neanderthal Capitalism
With all my production of literature, philosophy, music and art since 1994, I have tried to conjure various strategies to fight the rising tide of fascism and racism, but especially the single-minded ways of being and thinking, which have become the major trend in Turkey and all the world during the last four decades. This trend has grown into a particular case between 2002 and 2018 in Turkey with the aid of American and European manipulations which I named »nano-fascism« and »Neanderthal capitalism« in my recent works. The idea of Neanderthal capitalism was constituted in time as a result of the proliferation of populist governments and leaders, which flourished all across Europe and America in the name of making their countries »strong again«. This common will, which has been adopted by the masses that has ended up in the election of the world’s most violent and greediest political leaders, is built on a limitless desire of a neanderthal violence, structured on the endless appropriation of anything that stretches between oneself and the horizon. It is more than rendering everything to be identical with one’s own desire (as, say in Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment) as the desire itself is now relocated and reidentified as the crypt of a long-lost atopology within the psyche, thus making even the process of identification unnecessary. When identification once required at least the availability of two separate things, with the rise of the Neanderthal capitalism, the unity or the inseparability of the identifier and the identified is overdetermined at birth with the production of those subjects, whose inclusion of all the universe within themselves as »one«, will lead to a perennial violence and fight against the ones who do not obey this rule. This sounds like reverting back to primitive roots, but only with the exception of what I have called »nano-fascism«. The latter could be invented only in the post-capitalist era as a result of a massive stupification of the in-dividual for whom there is no difference between the mediated and the media. The in-dividual of nano-fascism, in its difference from macro- and micro-fascism, has no notion of fascism as it steps into the world with chips of fascism integrated into it via socio-nano-technologies of the psyche and the body. The in-dividual of Neanderthal capitalism is born a fascist, with all its cells infused with the minutest details of how to fight and destroy each other for an unquenchable desire to have the upper hand over one another with an eye to perfect integrity and discipline – the murder and death of anything that pertains to life as it were. In contrast to Leibnizian monadology, where each monad includes in itself all the universe, the nano-fascist thinks that the whole universe is included only within itself and anything against this rule can be the initiator of most violent acts, even against the rebellious nano structures within his own physical and psychological make-up.
Without doubt, for this schema to be realised, the West had to wait for some results to be obtained from a laboratory country which is called Turkey. The Turkish political scene had always been designed by the Western hands, but the period between 2002 and 2018 deserves a special attention, during which Turkey has seen the rise of Neanderthal capitalism and nano-fascism to its fullest capacity. First, Islam. Among all the monotheist religions, Islam is the only one, where the schizophrenic schema, which is the base of all religions, is denied to the extent of making not only the believer, but also the deity the victim of a unity as one side of the same coin. The schizophrenic in the first place requires a space, a distance from the other with whom it will put itself into a relative relationship in a manner of rupture and worship. The transcendental must keep itself distant from the worshipper to yield either belief or disbelief, but this distance is an absolute necessity for the schizophrenic to come alive. In contrast, this distance is abolished in Islam and the believer and the believed or the worshipper and the worshipped are already identified with each other (in accordance with the neanderthal logic), and they occupy the same side of the coin leaving the other side to be a place without an occupant, that is, a realm of the voice of the symbolic father, the yoke of which neither Allah nor the worshipper is free: »Ikra« (or: Read!). Mohammed does not read, but is read by this command – a perfect subject of enunciation. This very same side then turns into a place waiting for its occupant, i.e. the place of the would-be Despot, who will occupy it as the occupant with no place, as an empty transcendental. The Despot will thus ensure his power over the two by being both the occupant with no place and the resident of the place with no occupant by the displacement of the transcendental. Conceptually speaking, this is where nothing will transcend the conceptual unity of the worshipper and the worshipped, except the voice of the Despot, who will be incessantly reading and conceptualising the two. One side occupied by a transcendental which does not transcend and the other with an empty transcendental as an absolute transcender. Worshipper and the worshipped on one side, and the voice of the Despot on the other. Having erased the schizophrenia of »the Me and the other« with the unity of the worshipper and the worshipped, this is where the capitalism turns into Neanderthal capitalism. If the outcome of this project is nano-fascism, i.e. the incorporation of the empty transcendental by the worshipper and the worshipped, who does not know what identification is, such a moment also signals the birth of a special clinical case, namely, the Cotard’s delusion.5 »Being the sub-ject that I am, I knew that I’ve always been dead!« This is why the growing number of suicide bombers has invaded not only the Middle-East today, but will soon invade the whole world, given the growing tendency to appropriate the desire to erase the distinction between the identifier and the identified. Leibniz’s monad had no windows, but the victim of the Cotard’s delusion does not even know what a window is.
The worshipper is thus doubly negated first by the Allah who rejects to separate itself from the worshipper and then by the voice of the Despot: »You are no one without me and I am no one without the Despot!« The result is no more the scizzo of late capitalism but the doubly negated, and hence affirmed and integrated nano-fascist of Neanderthal capitalism. »Everything must be included in me as unseparated and undifferentiated, otherwise I kill you and if not I kill myself.« Such is the motto of the nano-fascist under the aegis of Neanderthal capitalism.
It comes as no surprise then, when the results, obtained from a laboratory called Turkey, are applied to the Western countries (among whom America is the prime example), the expectation is that it will yield to the same Cotard’s delusion as a total submission of the subject to the voice of the Despot in order to be negated. The novelty of nano-fascism is that it does not ask for obedience any more, but all is a matter of letting oneself be read and conceptually negated by the Despot, i.e. agreeing to be dead. Yes, there is no Hitler today, but in the absence of Nietzsche or Schlegel brothers, nobody in the West is ready to accept this (except, perhaps, the followers of Marquis De Sade) as a matter of fact. The sadist, as Deleuze put it, will never reach a full satisfaction unless everything in the world is destroyed. It is already there in Joy Division’s album cover »Closer« in 1980. All the tracks from »Still« (1981) are particular symptoms of approaching Cotard’s delusion: to be dead. The latter was once adopted as a strategical tool of the Punks: it was actually the core of Punk – how to enjoy the death disco under the deprived circumstances. However, within twenty years, this strategy, adopted by Neanderthal capitalism, turned into how to make the masses know no difference between the identifier and the identified. The nano-fascist as a dead body is now devouring everything that lies outside his horizon, i.e. everything which raises the problem of identification. Everything should appear without appearing as something already identified and dead. The situation is no different than the one described by Roger Caillois: what was once considered a radical move is now reverted to the subjection of the masses to the desire of melting into the background, thus, forgetting the categories of time and space, which were the sole conditions of the subject to appear as such. Neanderthal capitalism, backed up by Islamic dogma, is now the real enemy. How to appropriate the negative, a nonconceptual negativity is extremely difficult under these circumstances, but not impossible.
The nonconceptual in fact is the residue of Neanderthal capitalism, because whatever it appropriates in the name of a monadology (which doesn’t even know what a window is) is prone to get lost within the atopology of the surface as the unmaintable. The nonconceptual therefore is not the opposite of the conceptual, but that which is always already yet to come. Imagine, for example, Ian Curtis sang his songs always from within a coffin and when he committed suicide he was already dead. The double negative at work here is not there to affirm the death-affirming voice of the Despot, but to negate radically what is being imposed on us as conceptual and affirmative.
Please don’t die.
My thanks go to CARA (Council for At-Risk Academics and the University of Kent for making this essay possible
Literature
Agamben, Giorgio: Poiesis and Praxis, in: The Man Without Content (trans.G. Albert). Stanford
Aracagök, Zafer (2003): On Rhythm, Resonance and Distortion, in: Pli – The Warwick Journal of Philosophy (Vol 14, 2003). Warwick.
Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe (1998): Transcendence Ends in Politics, in: Typography (trans. P. Caws). Stanford, pp. 267-300.
1Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe (1998): Transcendence Ends in Politics, in: Typography (trans. P. Caws). Stanford, pp. 267-300.
2For further info about the question of rhythm related to epistemology and ontology, please see, Aracagök, Zafer (2003): On Rhythm, Resonance and Distortion, in: Pli – The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, (Vol 14, 2003), Warwick.
3Agamben, Giorgio: Poiesis and Praxis, in: The Man Without Content (trans.G. Albert). Stanford, pp. 69-93.
4Ibid., p. 94.
5One of the strangest and rarest mental disorders that has been studied academically is Cotard’s Syndrome (CS), and also known as the Cotard Delusion, the Nihilistic Delusion, and the Walking Corpse Syndrome, CS is where individuals hold the delusional belief that they are dead (figuratively or literally) and do not exist … CS is named after the 19th century French neurologist Jules Cotard who first described the condition in 1880. Cotard named the disorder the »negation delirium« (le délire de négation). https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-excess/201410/dead-strange