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Long Read: Not even defeats remained from our “historic victories”. What’s next, my dear cousin?

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By Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist

You have certainly noticed the hyperinflation of the “historical”. Few things are not declared as such today. In addition to “historical victories of our athletes”, there are also “historical agreements between countries”, “historic election victories”, “historical applications”, “historical brands and their products”… The need for promotion of “historical” comes from a deep, repressed awareness of the irrelevance, the inauthenticity of what we do.

We also had a “historic change of government”, a “historic victory of democracy” and a “game change” in Montenegro. What’s left of it all? A sacked government that is again a government, a government with less democratic legitimacy than has been the case with any since 1989 and a game that has become even dirtier and even more unprincipled. What’s next, cousin?

But the hyperinflation of history, like any other, devalues: if everything is historical, nothing is.

And it can be done differently… Kissinger recorded a conversation with Zhou Enlai, who, during the conversation, was predictably reserved according to the so-called “Western values”. At one point, Kissinger, as revolutionaries, said – you certainly do have some opinion on the French Revolution?

“It’s too early to tell,” Enlai said.

Our civilization has become instant, too instant, as Virilio observed. “I want it now and I want it all”, that is our credo. But it’s obvious we cannot go far with such an opinion.

There are no final victories or final defeats. Nothing ever ends. After all, when the end comes, we won’t even notice.

As Kierkegaard writes in “Either/Or”:

“A fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.”

Final things are not just a point reached. The movement is final, but what kind: repetition. Finally, Hegel interprets Badiou, “that which comes out of itself only to remain there… that which, coming out of itself to produce the Other, remains in the element of the Same. In the place of self-alteration, there is only iteration”. This is what Hegel calls “bad infinity.”

Let’s stick to the word “iteration”. It leads us to the word “fractal” denoting geometric shapes that are “mutually self-similar, consisting of scaled-down versions of themselves”. If Wikipedia is to be believed, “in a way almost the whole world is made up of fractal shapes… Mandelbrot used the example of the seashore as a fractal – coves are similar to bays, capes to peninsulas…

If we get a little closer, each rock would resemble a peninsula. Greater approach reveals protrusions in the rock that also resemble peninsulas. In these protrusions there are small depressions that have the same shape as the bays. Such a procedure can be continued up to the level of molecules. Many parts of the human body are fractal structures. An obvious example is the system of blood vessels, which, in principle, have the same structure as trees. DNA also gives a fractal structure.

“Poor infinity represents repetitive sterility of exceeding. In that sense, there is nothing but the final in its negative definition (repetition), ”says Badiou, explaining the motif for the end of art.

We observe the same kind of bad infinity in human desire, whose object, in Lacan’s interpretation, constantly returns to the same place. Desire cannot be satisfied. The iteration seems to be all around us.

We continue to live through our descendants, who are the same as us. And history is, therefore, just a bad infinity: it is like a broken plate – constantly in motion, constantly in the repetition of the same sequence. “And nothing new under the sun…”.

When a parent plans the future of a child, he usually does it keeping in mind the things he himself didn’t achieve in the past: “if I couldn’t, my son will be able to”. What he didn’t manage to do, his son should: the son should provide a happy ending to his father’s story, to subsequently, after the father’s death, close all the holes in the scenario of the father’s life. This, of course, will not be the case: the son will leave the completion of his story (and all the stories that preceded it) to his son. This is the history of mankind: for now, with no good ending.

But we are still interested in what the end might look like. Imagine the following scenario. Suppose (and at this stage of science development, this is not SF, but a realistic projection of the near future) that cloning experiments will soon enable serial cloning of human beings. Suppose, moreover, that there are interested companies which see great economic potential in cloning: we can always count on human greed most seriously. Suppose, then, that every obstacle to the commercial exploitation of that scientific discovery is removed: anyone who can pay, as many times as he can pay, will be able to be cloned again and again. It is the very definition of repetitive sterility of what produces itself from itself.

Such an existence is obviously contrary to what Heidegger considers to be an authentic existence. Not accepting one’s own mortality, rejecting the gift of mortality (“Whatever it is, everything is God’s grace,” he says while dying in Bresson’s film The Village Priest’s Diary), is an act of the same arrogance as suicide, which rejects the gift of life? If we could think so, we would find it easier to accept Heidegger’s determination to link authentic existence to death, in being-to-death, seeking a step out of infinite iteration in some Event, in some openness

The Apocalypse is undoubtedly an Event, one that abolishes history as a bad infinity. Note here that the apocalypse itself is a repetition: it is brought by Christ who comes again. But it is a repetition that brings something new, as opposed to a repetition that is a simple reproduction of the old.

We can explain the future as the realization of different possibilities of the past. Some of these scenarios have already been played. Their persistent repetition leads to bad infinity. But the future, as Zizek explained, can reveal potential hidden in the past. Instead of a closed future, we get a past that is open. In order for the past to be open, in order for its potential to be realized, it is necessary to betray it by leaving it. Žižek explains how we can repeat the work of great minds in two ways – by literally repeating them, holding them as a sacred letter, or by abandoning the literal interpretation and finding the “excessive center” of their thought.

Let us note here: in order for the potential of Christ’s teaching to be fully fulfilled, it had to be betrayed by his student Judas. Close is the answer to Christ’s question asked during the crucifixion: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” – because only through that “abandonment” could the Savior be revealed in full glory. If Christ had not been “abandoned,” there would have been no crucifixion. If there were no crucifixion, there would be no Christianity. Aside from the fact that Christ on the cross does not feel betrayed and abandoned, but prays, recites Psalm 22. Contrary to the wrong and mass belief, during the crucifixion, Christ didn’t feel betrayed or abandoned. That is why he does not cry, but prays – thus he does not express doubt, but faith.

In order for the potential of Christ’s teaching to be realized, he had to be “abandoned.” In order for the potential of history to be fulfilled, an apocalypse is necessary, after which we leave history. In order for man’s potential to be fully realized, humanism must be abandoned.

You remember Zemeckis’ movie Back to the Future? Michael J. Fox plays a young man who, with the help of a time machine – a car constructed by a “crazy” scientist – returns to the past. There, in 1955, he changed the sequence of what had already happened by his actions, so that his existence was annulled in 1985, the year from which he set out on a time journey. Namely, the young man acquires the romantic affection of his mother, which prevents the connection between her and his father, and which, in turn, prevents the precondition of his existence.

Back to the Future is a movie favorite among American Republicans. During his presidency, Ronald Reagan used a quote from this film in a speech: “There has never been a more exciting time to be alive, a time of determined pursuit and heroic achievement. As they say in Back to the Future: Where we go, we don’t need roads.” Reagan was, after all, a big fan of the science fiction genre – let’s remember his space project named after the Lucas series – Star Wars. By the way, in his speeches, George W. Bush repeatedly called ‘Back to the Future’ as well.

‘Back to the Future’ trilogy is based on the idea that any intervention in the past can be disastrous, because it can reflect on the future in an unpredictable way. The movie is based on the idea that the past is open to change. The science-fiction assumption of Zemeckis’s movie finds practical application where not expected – in historical science, which is a frequent victim of the enthusiasm of various political and ideological movements. You have noticed that political change often brings with it changes in writing and reading history. The new seeks and finds legitimacy in the old, bringing to the fore the facts that will show how the new order is in fact an expression of so-called “historical aspirations”, a kind of historical necessity. By intervening in history, the new tries to show how it comes naturally and organically from the past. Let’s explain this with Hegel’s paraphrase: if the past does not meet the needs of the present, so much the worse for the past.

In the novel Arrival, I perhaps imagined an unusual kind of detective: one who does not reveal the truth, but confirms it. Its working principle implies listening carefully to the client’s wishes. “Sooner or later, he will hint about his doubts. Then the deal was practically settled. Furthermore, you are only confirming a story that clients have come up with themselves. Let them know that you are close to a solution, but let them wait a little longer. For some reason, people think that the path to the truth is hard work… There is already evidence for everything, only the story that this evidence will support is missing… The job of a detective is not so much to find the truth as to find stories which people will accept as the truth. It is not about discovering the truth here: it is about discovering what is true for these people, it’s what it’s about. Truth always appears as fiction, it always takes the form of a story. I tell stories.”

We have seen in the example of the Montenegrin independence referendum how what is said in a quote is manifested in the field of political struggle. Since the independence party won by 10%, the referendum was interpreted as an expression of the libertarian aspirations of the Montenegrin people. Had the other, unionist side won, the outcome of the referendum would have been interpreted as an expression of Serbia’s historical commitment. Both outcomes would be “natural and organic and historically determined.” And indeed, to claim that the outcome could not have been different, that it was determined in one way or another, is comical – victory in the referendum was not achieved then and there, but now and here – not in history, but on field, in a political propaganda -diplomatic-financial-intelligence struggle.

Let’s change, for a moment, the perspective from which we look Back to the Future. Consider an idea already inscribed (but not elaborated) in Zemeckis’ movie: we truly know nothing about our past until the end of our time. The past is retroactively determined by the future. The past has not yet happened: it is yet to happen. This is also the essence of the Apocalypse – our history will be interrupted by one violent and arbitrary act that will reduce all the turmoil of interpretations, an endless series of indecisive “for” and “against” to one word of the One.

We are talking about an event that is organized as something which will determine the meaning of history and lead to the subsequent (re) evaluation of all our actions. Not coincidentally, on the Day of Judgment, everyone will be tried again – both the living and the dead, who will be raised from their graves to stand trial. The verdict that will be passed will be final – there is no address in Strasbourg to which we could send an appeal. After Judgment Day, it will be possible to speak to God only with the stubbornness of a forever haunted looser, loudly and without hope that the answer will ever arrive, as Ginsberg addressed America: “America when will you be angelic? When will you take off your clothes? When will you look at yourself through the grave? When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?

Our lives, all our past, will finally be interpreted. Until then, history is only a series of judgments made by the victors, judgments that will be revoked by those who defeat them, so that some future victors can start the process anew… Not coincidentally, in Christianity the truth is displaced from history. Christ is the truth, and his Second Coming means the end of history as we know it.

Also, and it’s not a coincidence, the revolutionary courts, with their proverbial brutality, try to imitate the practice of Judgment Day: after declaring the end of history (there is only time before and after the revolution, new history begins with the revolution), the Revolution takes on the job of pre-evaluating everything that used to happen.

The standard historical logic of time implies that there are multiple possibilities waiting to be realized. We choose one of them and at that moment all other possibilities disappear. Back to the Future develops the idea that different choices in the past open up the possibility for different futures. But what if the choice retroactively opens up its possibility?

If there is free will, it should be sought there – at the point where our decision manages to escape the shackles of determinism, at the point where our free choice acts on the past by opening in it the possibility of its realization? The future does not change with the choices made in the past (which is the basis of the plot of Zemeckis’ movie).

Not coincidentally, after all the turnabouts in the movie, the future remains the same: in the end, the past has only confirmed the future. The fight was waged in the wrong place. A choice made in the future changes the past (by opening up a new possibility in it), which then leads to a change in the future. Not today for tomorrow, but tomorrow for yesterday.

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