Iris ter Schiphorst
The Obscene Iniquity of the World and the Unexplored Utopia of Otherness (2024)
on the possibility of utopias in a time of multi-perspective crises... published in issue 22 of the Journal of the Arts of the Akademie der Künste/Berlin
When I was a child, a book title on my Dutch grandparents' bookshelf would always caught my eye: Doe-het-zelf Omnibus (Eindhoven 1967), which literally translates as "Do it yourself, Omnibus" - a puzzling and cryptich message for me at the time. I was only ten years old and handn't started Latin at school yet. Otherwise, I might have known that behind the exhortation "Do it yourself" was a 436-page manual for repairs of all kinds around the house and garden "for everyone" (Latin omnibus).
A direct line of connection leads from the do-it-yourself manuals of the 1960s, via the appeals to the “entrepreneurial self” at the start of the millennium, to the innumerable self-help guides that now swamp bookstores and flood the internet. They all invoke the self-made man, that emblem of modernity (and of America, in particular) which purportedly holds out the promise that every man (and every woman – although there’s a question mark hanging over this) can “make it” on their own if they try hard enough and follow the right strategies. The “self” targeted by all these very different (but increasingly neoliberal) appeals is the entity that various schools of thought have put at the centre of the Enlightenment since the early modern period – the philosophical movement whose objective is nothing less than to empower individuals (in the future) to realise their nature through reason and art(!), i.e. to become autonomous (self-determined) humans. Nowadays, this projekct has found its exemplary technical realisation in the automobile [0] in contrast to the ominibus. This variant successfully brings the idea of autonomy and freedom into the world. The ability to move autonomously from one place to another by car is now regarded almost everywhere in the world as the quintessence of freedom and self-determination. The Enlightenment’s chief concern, autonomy (in the form of self-determination and self-realisation), seems to have prospered, spreading – at least in its technological guise – throughout the world. The same cannot be said for the ideas of equality, justice and freedom, which are still waiting to be manifested (and put into practice politically).[1]
Auto or omnibus. The two words point to different principles – which may actually be irreconcilable in capitalist terms – that continue to influence Western thinking and thus shape the Enlightenment project. The principle of “auto” (own, self) – which has been in favour since the Enlightenment and is still protected and vehemently defended by many laws (in artworks; in the public sphere as freedom of expression; in the world of property, as ownership, etc.) – is an “absolute prerequisite” (Jean-Luc Nancy) of politics, ethics and the aesthetics of Western thought. In contrast, the “omnibus” principle, which represents equality, justice and freedom “for all”, has played little part in determining the conduct of politics for decades. However, the idea of “for everyone” is becoming increasingly topical in the context of the climate emergency: countless people will lose their homes, natural resources will be used up, species will die out, and global warming will become irreversible – in short, the functionality of the earth’s entire system is being called in question. And all because a few companies (some ninety worldwide) can’t get enough. [2]
Like Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno – who, having faced up to the question eighty years ago of how it was possible that the history of scientific and technological progress led not to human liberation but to Auschwitz, believed they had found the answer in the Enlightenment itself and its “lack of reflection” – the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy sees an ambivalent relationship to reason at work in the Enlightenment, which has saddled the “infinitude of Being” with a “surfeit of autonomy, the ruin of the self”. [3] His fatalistic conclusion is that the Enlightenment and its attempt to devise a universally valid conception of humanity must ultimately be regarded as a failure. He describes it as the failed project of the autonomous subject in pursuit of self-determination and free will, a project that, throughout history, has mutated into an unadulterated capitalist venture predicated on a belief in progress and is now, as a “techno-economic project”, in the process of absorbing everything. In Nancy’s view, the question of a good life for all, justice, equality, and freedom for all, as well as finding a common denominator, has gone from this project. Not a word is said about our dependency on others, our being with others and being needed, about care and love, without which we could not survive, or our mortality (feminist philosophers, in particular, have regularly devoted space to this idea). However, he argues that humans lack autonomy not only because they depend on others but also because there is a “surplus” in their physical nature: language, concept and logos. For Nancy, language sets humans apart from all other living creatures. And this surplus, this “more”, empowers humans to complete their incompleteness – the imperfection of nature – with technology, to use it to replace their imperfections. Technology thus accomplishes what nature seems to have neglected. But does this mean that nature fulfils itself through technology or, vice versa, that technology is nature since it pursues a programme obedient to the purpose appointed by nature?
So why isn’t there enough sustenance for everyone, clean water for everyone, food for everyone, clean air for everyone, housing for everyone, medical care for everyone, vaccines for everyone, human rights for everyone, freedom to travel for everyone, the right to vote for everyone, education for everyone, child daycare for everyone? “ "THER IS NOT ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE," - says Hitler in a play by Heiner Müller: “To distinguish between us for whom there is enough … and those for whom there is not enough, is to be fascist, according to Hitler.” [3] Who makes this – in Müller’s view – fascist distinction today? It is a technology that has become the trademark of investment capitalism, a financial automation that rules the world, making only a handful of people rich (and powerful). In this logic of autonomisation/automation, this regime of technological reason, there is no fairness, no place for the other, for needing and being needed. “Being with” (MIT-SEIN) is confined to trading market equivalences. Its logic needs no fairness, no equality, no democracy, just consumers and investors. Can this “auto” logic be stopped? By whom? By the finitude of resources? Even that’s not certain.
What does all this mean for utopias? Do they still exist? What about feminism, human rights, climate justice? Are these not concrete utopias or are we perhaps no longer capable of thinking in terms of alternatives? In 1964, Adorno noted a "strange shrinkage of utopian consciousness". While people are aware deep down, he says, that it is not enough to exist without hunger and anxiety, and they must also live “as free human beings”. However, “the social apparatus has hardened itself against people, and thus, whatever appears before their eyes all over the world as attainable possibility, as the evident possibility of fulfillment, presents itself to them as radically impossible.”[7] Today, at any rate, there is almost no major movement, it would seem, no social project that attends to the obscene injustice of this world. We are evidently too exhausted.
What remains is art. Does it not have some utopian potential as an alternative to the project of unfettered capitalism, or is it part of the problem? What can it do to counter this Weltgeist, the spiritus mundi of capitalisation (and cannibalisation) in all areas of life? Can it sustain the belief in justice, freedom and equality (and, with it, the belief in true democracy)? The “Enlightenment” project focused on the future, the completion of nature, and its self-actualisation. In this process, art finally became “autonomous” in its function of helping (Western) men and women fulfil their “true, inner” natural purpose and of becoming complete human beings. At the same time, in every work of art, an autonomy is manifested that is fully complete. This seems to contain an infinitude of meaning – in other words, in the completeness (the autonomy) of every work of art, there is, paradoxically, an interminability, a contingency, something that is beyond measure: “This characteristic completeness (of the artwork) calls for new and different forms: not, however, as a progressive realisation of its purpose – because every art form, being absolute in each case, fulfils its purpose completely. Instead, it has to do with a negativity that agitates rather than signifies progress in the ultimate purpose of the artwork as such.” [8]
According to Jean-Luc Nancy, with the “death of God” (the Enlightenment), we lost sight of the immeasurable, of our finitude. He argues that humanity in the modern age believes that mortality is merely an annoyance, an “imperfection” that technology can eliminate. At the same time, the question of transcendence, of the immeasurable, remains unanswered. But if self-determination and limitless autonomy are a matter for instrumental reason and its all-consuming techno-economic project, then might justice, equality, freedom, transcendence, and purposelessness be a matter for art “headed in the direction of an unexplored otherness”, [9] bound by the certainty of death? Or not?
[0] Derived from Frechn, the term automobile originally referred to a self-driven vehicle, as opposed to a horse-drawn wagon.
[1] Although globally, democracies and autocracies were almost equal in 2023 - 91 conutries with democratic governments as compared with 88 autocratic regimes- nearly 6 billion people worldwide (71 %) around the world are governed autocratically wiht slightly over 2 billion (29%) living in democraties. The number of autocracies, i.e. systems of government without free and fair elections and without a modicum of civil liberties, has been steadily increasing. The trend contuinues. Fundamental democratic rights (such as freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and free elections) have been increasingly restricted over the past 10 years, even in democratically governed countries. See the Democracy Report published each year by the V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute based in the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden,2024
[2] Richard Heede, Tracing anthropogenic carbon dioxide and methane emissions to fossil fuel and cement producers, 1854-2010, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-013-0986-y, last accessed on 12 March 2024.
[3] I refer below to the following books by Jean-Luc Nancy: The Inoperative Community (1991), The Fragile Skin of the World (2021), Listening (2007)
[3] Christoph Mencke, Aesthetics of Equality/ Ästhetik der Gleichheit, 100 Notes - 100 Thougths/100 Notizen - 100 Gedanken, no.10. Ostfildern, 2011, pp.4-5, http://bettinafuncke.com/100notes/010_A6_Christoph_Menke.pdf, accessed27 March 2024.
[4] "Something is Missing : A DIscussion between Ernst BLoch and Theodor W. Adorno on the Contradictions of Utopian Longing" in Ernst Bloch,The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays, trans. Jack Zipes and Frank Mecklenburg, Cambridge, MA, 1988, pp.3-4
[5] Marita Tatari, "Zweck und Auflösung der Kunst - Aktualität versus Nutzen", a lecture in the Really Useful Theatre series', Sophiensäle Berlin, 21 November 2015,
http://usefultheater.de/zweck-und-aufloesung-der-kunst/, accessed 18 December 2023.
[9] See Tatarum note 5