Catastrophe, Contagion, and Aphanisis: The Homeopathic/Fatal Strategies of the Postmodern Subject

Abstract

The concern of this paper is to give some postmodernist theories which share in an ”immanent critique” of the postmodern subject, a critique informed by what Žižek calls ”sacrifice of sacrifice” or what Baudrillard calls ”death against death.” The constitutive contradiction of postmodern subjectivity is that, to manifest itself, it first has to efface itself: not only does the postmodern subject have to sacrifice its traditional imaginary or symbolic mandates or roles, but it also has to sacrifice the act of sacrifice itself. As Žižek puts it, ”the subject must 'disappear,' die, yet his sacrifice will not become a myth.” This redefines the parameters of identification. To sacrifice the sacrifice, to fight death with death, is what Jameson calls the ”homeopathic” critique of the (post) modern subject and, as Baudrillard calls it, a ”fatal strategy.” This approach requires the (post) modern subject to decenter and deterritorize itself in a radical way to survive the postmodern world of hyperreality, simulations, or deterritorization. But the fatal strategies of the subject should not be mistaken for postmodern pluralism or politics of difference; rather, the fatal strategy should be taken as what Lacan calls ”the second death” by which the (death) drive, thanks to the transformation of the human form of identification, can manifest itself in the mode of the Deleuzian flux of desire or body without organs. Based on a re-reading of Baudrillard, Deleuze, and Lacan, who have long been aligned with poststructuralism, this paper will remap the postmodern subject through the homeopathic critique of poststructuralism provided by the three theorists. Baudrillard entices the postmodern subject to follow the fatal strategies of the object by which the postmodern subject can turn itself into a catatrophic subject and fight catastrophe with catastrophe. Deleuze calls for the postmodern subject to create multiplicity or inner variation, an act which Deleuze calls ”contagion.” Lacan appeals to aphanisis or subjective destitution of the postmodern subject, to its ”second death” by which the subject can be ”separated” from the Other and turn alienation (from the Other) into a death drive (of the subject).