Dramatization and De-Dramatization of "The End": The Apocalyptic Consciousness of Modernity and Post-Modernity

Abstract

ion of an absence of events by referring to the dynamic of events whose presence is at least latent. His position has consequences for the idea of the nature of the present social situation and for the aesthetic means with which it can finally be thought. One consequence is the assertion of an objective irony, an attitude of indifference characterized by the statement Everything has already 13. Ibid., 62. 14. Ibid., 53. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.159 on Sun, 18 Sep 2016 05:36:19 UTC use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Consciousness of Modernity and Post-Modernity happened, and Baudrillard willingly concedes that this attitude possesses a certain seductiveness or passionate quality. aesthetic fascination is apparently contained in the subject's almost ecstatic surrender and submission to the indifference emanating from the object and to the incomprehensible objectivity of the system, whose purely abstract existence constitutes the catastrophe. Yet another consequence is the recourse to eventfulness, whose non-existence is apparently not so complete, since it is not only destroyed by the system but also produced anew. Eventfulness itself produces a threatening dynamic, which can be noted, if nowhere else, as an acceleration towards the end. To be sure, this acceleration can be, indeed has to be, described as the system's own continued functioning, but in this motion energies are set free that require or even demand an event here and now (death, revolution, catastrophe). The revolution will never rediscover death if it doesn't demand it immediately.15 Although Baudrillard has disavowed this pathos in the course of articulating his theory (perhaps one should speak ofpseudo-progress), the de-dramatization carries with itself a notion that requires the validity of one particular illusion within the of disillusion [Illusionslosigkeit], namely, the intensification of the catastrophic condition. pseudo-revolution of May 1968 is accorded a certain eventful tone: All in all, it was an intensive event, timely and with a special tone.'6 formulation alone shows that Baudrillard at this point is still betting on the aesthetic fascination with the intensity that can emanate from such an event. In the relatively uneventful 1980s Baudrillard announces his affinity to the fatal strategy of the era, which wants to counter the absence of hope for the future by calling for an anticipation of the end, wishing for the sudden event of total destruction in place of the deadly waiting. Apocalypse now is the last possible event that can be pitted against the abstraction of eventlessness. aesthetic consciousness of postmodernity insists on objective irony when confronted with the social situation of pure reproduction. Yet, the aesthetic fascination with events does not seem to have disappeared completely in the process. If my observations are correct, then playing with the apocalypse is an integral part ofpostmodern social philosophy. One consequence of 15. Baudrillard, Der symbolische Tausch und der Tod, 295. 16. Baudrillard, Das Jahr 2000 wird nicht stattfinden. Nach der Geschichte: Herrschaft der Simulation, Spuren 6 (May/June 1984): 28. 101 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.159 on Sun, 18 Sep 2016 05:36:19 UTC use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 102 Klaus R. Scherpe the postmoder condition is that the de-dramatization of the has become a dominant image in spite of the fact that among Baudrillard's followers, especially among his German followers, a re-dramatization of the is at hand. Baudrillard's theory represents itself as a particular constellation of aesthetic consciousness,which is supposed to embody postmodernist thought. This consciousness has been fatally enriched with reflections on the end of finality and is therefore identifiable as a theory of catastrophe, or as a theoretical when compared with the consciousness and theory of crisis contained in modernism. 17 specifically aesthetic dimension of the consciousness of refers to a particular constellation in the theory and literature of modernism visible in Germany since the of WWI. If postmodern knowledge insists, as Lyotard writes, on treating its own development as discontinuous, catastrophic, and irrevocably flawed,'8 the aesthetic consequences of such a position can already be seen in the aesthetic representations of this epistemological paradox produced at a point in history when the social process of modernization and rationalization was so obvious that it became necessary to posit for art and for aesthetic reflection (freedom from rules, the state of emergency, productive destruction). When Baudrillard reflects on the permanent recycling of all social phenomena and discourses and speaks of a world irradiated with norms, in which every instance of heterogeneity and contradiction is made to disappear, he is radicalizing ideas whose roots lie in the theoretical and literary critique of civilization put forth by writers like ErnstJiinger, Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, or Thomas Mann however different the proportion of destructive to liberating criticism in their ideologies. If, in view of his post-historical theory, Baudrillard fancies himself to be theorizing under conditions of seductive or impassioned aesthetic indifference, from which he is nevertheless able to remind us of the aesthetic intensity of events, he merely accentuates aesthetic phenomena that have been constantly reflected in the development of modernism. historical difference is, however, not to be denied: where Baudrillard includes a remnant of eventfulness in his theory retro17. In his Die katastrophale Moderne HansJiirgen Heinrichs defends the notion that Critical Theory would have to prove itself as atheory of catastrophe if it were around today (66). 18. Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, 38. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.159 on Sun, 18 Sep 2016 05:36:19 UTC use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Consciousness of Modernity and Post-Modernity spectively, modernism in German literature and in German literary theory since Weimar had banked on the power of the revolutionary