The Shadow on the Picture: Of Evil or the Negative

Abstract

Contemporary discourse—or, to put itmore precisely, globalizedofficial discourse—seems to be invoking its ultimate purpose when it persistently dins our ears with its legitimate aspiration to an all-embracing positivity: peace (repeated relentlessly in all languages as a univocal directive), cooperation, communication, and so on. As if the elimination of the negative were at last within reach, that we had but a few final obstacles to remove before casting it out of history once and for all, or at least that suchapurpose could be accomplished if only we had the will to do so, ambient discourse boldly brandishes the optative in a chain of resolutions: no more wars, no more divisions, no more borders, and so forth. Not so fast, the realist pensively sighs, there may still be a long road ahead; but insofar as the end is concerned, there is nothing to discuss. Henceforth, political and religious discourse (the grand ecumenism of the pope and the dalai lama) are in total agreement on the subject. Yet, hand in hand with this triumph of asepticized unanimity, at least on the level of discourse, we have been witnessing an amazingly primitive resurgence of diabolical figures whose elimination would purportedly suffice for history to finally show its radiant face. “Call it, as I do, axis of evil; call it by any name you choose, but let us speak the truth.” Apparently one last “conspiracy” is unexpectedly delaying our progress (in just the same way communist regimes used to speak of final conspiracies diabolically obstructing the road to a “radiant future”). Evil, I repeat, or whatever else you call it, it’s all the same. A point of resistance or blockage is being designated whose nature is such that it has no part in any coherence and whose erad-