Nihilism in the Flesh

While much of the current cultural discussion regarding technoculture focuses

on issues emerging from new communications technology, there is an

exponentially growing interest in and discussion of flesh technology. Like the

discussion on new communications technologies, this discourse vacillates

wildly from the intensely critical and skeptical to the accepting and utopian.

However, the most significant intersection between the two discourses is their

parallel critique of vision enhancement. Whether it is the development of

global satellite vision or the development of micro interior vision, imaging

systems are key to both apocalyptic or utopian tendencies. For example,

sonography can be used to map an ocean floor, or it can be used to map uterine

space. In both cases, such imaging systems function as a first step toward the

ability to culturally engineer and ideologically design those spaces. As these

two spheres of technology continue to intermingle, a recombinant theory of the

relationship of populations and bodies to technology has begun to emerge that

conflates theories of the social and the natural. The existence of such

theories under the legitimizing mantle of the authority of science is not new,

and in fact the theories have fallen in and out of favor since the 19th

century. They continually re-emerge in different guises, such as Social

Darwinism (Malthusian and Spencerian philosophy), eugenics, and socio-biology.

In each case the results of such thinking have been socially catastrophic,

setting loose the unrestrained deployment of authoritarian ideology and

nihilistic social policy.

Apparently theories of deep social evolution have come into favor

again, and are rising from the grave to haunt unsuspecting populations.

Socially dangerous principles of cultural development, such as fitness,

natural selection, and adaptability are again in fashion. Consider the

following quote from the announcement for the 1996 Ars Electronica Symposium

and Exhibition:

"Human evolution, characterized by our ability to process information, is

fundamentally entwined with technological development. Complex tools and

technologies are an integral part of our evolutionary "fitness." Genes that

are not able to cope with this reality will not survive the next millennium".

This quote contains some of the most frightening authoritarian language since

the Final Solution, and presents the threat of "adapt or die" as a value-free

social given. To what is the reader expected to adapt? To the technology

developed under the regime of pancapitalism for the purpose of better

implementing its imperatives of production, consumption, and control. There is

nothing evolutionary (in the biological sense) about the pancapitalist

situation. It was engineered and designed by rational agencies. "Fitness" is a

designated status that is relative to the ideological environment, not the

natural environment. History repeats itself, as those resistant to

authoritarian order must once again separate the cultural and the natural, and

expose the horrific nihilistic tendency that arises when the two are confused.

Nihilism

Nihilism can have either positive or negative political associations. For

example, some liberationists view nihilism as a revolutionary strategy capable

of dissolving boundaries which retard the full exploration of human

experience, while those interested in maintaining the status quo view it as a

method of social disruption which manifests itself in destruction and chaos.

Certainly the original description of nihilism, in Turgenev's novel Fathers

and Sons, presented it as a revolutionary method designed to promote

Enlightenment political principles. The engine of nihilism in this case was

reason, and its application manifested itself in an overly deterministic and

domineering model of Western science. Turgenev contrasts the nihilist position

with Christian models of faith and a monarchist social order. While many who

situate themselves on the left can sympathize with the nihilist's will to free

h/erself from the constraints of the traditional model of church and state,

there is also an uneasy feeling about this variety of nihilism, as a danger

exists of replacing one tyrant with another. One cannot help but question if

replacing faith and understanding with reason and knowledge could lead to an

equivalent state of oppression. Nietzsche makes this point very elegantly in

his assertions that movement toward purity and uncritical acceptance (in this

case, of reason) always leads to hegemony and domination.

The case of Nietzsche in regard to nihilism is peculiar. While the

Nietzschean notion of philosophy with a hammer seems to fit well with the

nihilistic process, Nietzsche actually inverts the argument. From his

perspective, the ability of humans to challenge dominant institutions is an

affirming quality. It affirms life and the world. While the process has

elements of conflict and destruction, acts of skepticism, disavowal, and

resistance are intentionally directed toward the possibility of freedom, and

thereby redeem people from the horrid fate of willing nothingness, rather than

not willing at all. From this perspective, the primary example of the

pathologically nihilistic will made manifest is the institution of the church

in particular and religion in general. Religions encourage the subject to

bring about h/er own disappearance and thereby, to eliminate the world which

envelops h/er. One abhors presence, and seeks absence. The problem for

Nietzsche is that he cannot accept the principles of absence (the soul, God,

the heavenly kingdom) that are dictated to society under the authority of

church rule, and perpetuated by an unquestioning faith. Nietzsche demands that

life rest in experience and in presence. To negate the given is an

unacceptable nihilistic position that undermines humanity itself.

On the other hand, if theological principles are accepted, one can

easily see how the positions of secularists appear nihilistic. To sacrifice

one's soul to the immediacy of experience is eternally destructive. The

immediacy of the sensual world should be understood as a site of temptation

that negates the joy of eternity. Those who focus their daily activities on

the sensual world are doomed to the torture of privation in this life, and to

damnation in the next life. To choose an object other than God is to be

continuously left unfulfilled, and during this time the soul decays from

neglect. In terms of Eastern theology, the situation of subject-object is

mediated by the hell of desire, which can only be pacified when the subject is

erased, and thereby returned to the unitary void. In both the Western and the

Eastern varieties of religious life, the subject can only find peace by

affirming God (as opposed to affirming the world).

The truly interesting and relevant point here in regard to

evolutionary social theory is that the 19th century conflict over the nature

of nihilism has a common thread. No matter what side of the debate one favors,

the discourse centers around institutional criticism. Nietzsche attacks the

church and its doctrines, while the church attacks secular institutions such

as science. People are not the object of nihilism, no matter how it is

defined. However, when nihilism is combined with notions of social evolution,

the object of nihilism (whether valued as good or bad) is people! It speaks of

the fitness of some, and the elimination of others. It is not a racial

construction that the authoritarians of social evolution seek to eliminate,

but people of a race; it is not a class that they seek to eliminate, but

people of a class; it is not an anachronistic skill that they seek to

eliminate, but people who have this skill.

Evolution is a theory, not a fact

To be sure, evolutionary theory has become such a key principle in organizing

biological information that some toxic spillage into other disciplines is

almost inevitable. It commands such great authority that its spectacle is

often confused for fact. At present, evolutionary theory is primarily

speculative; no valid and reliable empirical method has been developed to

overcome the temporal darkness that this conjecture is supposed to illuminate.

Consequently, evolutionary theory circles around in its own self-fulfilling

principles. It is in an epistemological crisis, in spite of authoritative

claims to the contrary.

The tautological reasoning of evolutionary theory proceeds as follows:

Those species with the greatest ability to adapt to a changing environment are

naturally selected for survival. Those that are selected not only survive, but

often expand their genetic and environmental domains. So how is it known that

a species has a capacity for adaptation? Because it was naturally selected.

How is it known that it was selected? Because it survived. Why did it survive?

Because it was able to adapt to its environment. In spite of this logical flaw

of rotating first principles, evolutionary theory brings a narrative to the

discipline that makes biological dynamics intelligible. While the theory can

in no way approach the realm of certainty, it does have tremendous

common-sense value. If for no other reason, evolutionary theory is dominant

because no one has been able to produce a secular counternarrative that has

such organizational possibilities.

Evolution is an intriguing notion for other reasons too. The idea that

natural selection is a blind process is certainly a turning point in Western

thinking. There is no teleology, not even the guiding "invisible hand."

Instead, evolution gropes through time, producing both successful and

unsuccessful species. Its varied manifestations display no order, only

accident. This notion is an incredible challenge to the Western desire for

rational order. At best, God is playing dice with the universe. The very

anarchistic strength of this notion is also its scientific downfall. How can

the accidental be measured in causal terms? For example, the engine of

physical adaptability is mutation. If mutation is the accidental, uncommon,

unexpected, and anomalous, how can it be quantified, when the knowledge

systems of science are based on the value of expectation and typicality?

Can we say with any degree of assurance that social development is

analogous to this model of biological development? It seems extremely unlikely

that culture and nature proceed in a similar fashion. Cultural dynamics appear

to be neither blind nor accidental. While the occurrence of chaotic moments in

social development cannot be denied, unlike with biological evolution, they do

not render the same totalizing picture. Cultural evolution, if there is such a

thing, seems for the most part to be orderly and intentional. It is structured

by the distribution of power, which can be deployed in either a negating or

affirming manner.

Culture and Causality

The ever-changing and transforming manifestations of power over time are the

foundation of what may be considered history. Power manifests itself in

countless forms, both as material artifacts and ideational representation,

including architecture, art, language, laws, norms, population networks, and

so on, which is to say as culture itself. When considering either culture or

history, it seems reasonable to contend that evolution (in its biological

sense) plays little if any role in the configuration of social structure or

dynamics. For example, the history of industrial capitalism spans only a brief

200 years. In the evolutionary timetable, this span of time scarcely

registers. The biological systems of humans have not significantly changed

during this period, nor for the last 10,000 years, and hence it would be

foolish to think that evolution played any kind of causal role in the

development of capitalism. In fact, humankind's seeming evolutionary

specialization (a mammal that specializes in intelligence) places it in a

post-evolutionary position. With the ability for advanced communication using

language capable of forming abstract ideas, in conjunction with the ability to

affect and even control elements of the body and the environment, humans have

at least temporarily inverted significant portions of the evolutionary

dynamic. In an astounding number of cases, the body and the environment do not

control the destiny of "humanity;" rather, "humanity" controls the destiny of

the body and its environment. Unlike the evolutionary process, social

development is overwhelmingly a rationalized and engineered process.

If the proposition that social development is a rationalized process

(perhaps even hyper-rationalized, under the pancapitalist regime) is accepted,

can evolutionary principles such as natural selection or fitness have any

explanatory value? This possibility seems very unlikely. For instance, there

is nothing "natural" about natural selection. At the macro level, the

populations that have the greatest probability of coming to an untimely end

are not selected for elimination by a blind natural process; rather, they are

designated as expendable populations. In the US, for example, the problem of

homelessness exists not because there is insufficient food and shelter for

every citizen, nor because this social aggregate is unfit, but because various

power sources have chosen to let the homeless continue in their present state.

The selection process in this case has agency; it is not a blind and

accidental process. What is being selected for in the age of pancapitalism

(and for most of human history) are cultural characteristics that will

perpetuate the system, and maintain the current power structure. This process

is intentional, self-reflexive, and at its worst, systematic--in other words,

intensely rational.

The concept of fitness follows the same unfortunate trajectory. Once

this concept is taken out of its original biological context and placed into a

social context, its explanatory power evaporates. When the concept of fitness

intersects an intentional environment, the idea is transformed from a

relatively neutral one to one that is intensely value-laden. Unlike the

biological concept of fitness, a category measured by the emergent

manifestations of survival, the sociological concept of fitness functions as a

reflection of a particular population that is then projected and inscribed

onto the general population. The valued characteristics (beauty, intelligence,

"normal" body configuration, etc.) that constitute fitness are designed and

deployed in a top-down manner by power sectors which control social policy

construction and image management and distribution. In a social environment

which has solved the challenge of production, fitness has no real meaning

other than to mark acceptable subjects, which in turn marginalizes and/or

eliminates "deviant" subjects. Without question, when fitness is placed into a

sociological context, it becomes a hideous ideological marker representing the

imperatives of the political-economy that deployed it.

Nature as Ideology

Nearly three decades ago Roland Barthes sent an illuminating flare into the

political air to warn us of the socially catastrophic results of using nature

as a code to legitimate social value. Under authoritarian rule, the social

realm is divided into the natural and the unnatural (the perverse). Everything

of value and of benefit to the empowered sectors of a given social system is

coded as natural, while everything which negates its demands by prompting

alternative or resistant forms of social activity and organization is coded as

unnatural in the environment of representation. But this binary system is

more complex. Given that one of these values of the empowered sector is that

of militarization in all its forms, a nasty wound opens as the social fabric

is ripped by contradictory ideological forces. On one hand, nature is viewed

in a very gentle sense as moral and pure, and thereby good. Hence that which

is natural is also good. On the other hand, when perceived through the

evolutionary ideological filter as a realm in which only the strong survive

the bloodbath of life, nature becomes abject, dangerous, and amoral. Hence,

that which is natural (sovereign) must be repelled. The ideological role of

the code of nature is doubled, and simultaneously exists as value and as

detriment, thereby allowing the code to float from one meaning to its

opposite. All that authoritarian power must do is contextualize the code, and

it will speak in whatever manner is desired by the social sectors with the

power to deploy it. In addition, for this code of control to function, its

inherent contradiction must be flawlessly sutured. This is done through

spectacular narrowcasts into the fragmented condition of everyday life.

It seems rather obvious that importing legitimized theories of natural

dynamics (in the case of pancapitalism, evolutionary principles) into the

ideological fabric is a necessity if this overall coding system is to

function. In this manner the constructive qualities of a given regime can be

coded as natural as can its pathologically nihilistic and destructive

tendencies, even, and perhaps especially, when they are aimed at other people!

Thus the code truly is totalizing. It does not have to be split into a binary

which has a boundary that authoritarian order cannot cross. Authoritarian

power can occupy all social space with impunity, both normal and deviant, for

constructive or destructive purposes.

Biohazards

When the dark code of nature (survival of the fittest) is efficiently deployed

within a given population, genocidal nihilism becomes an acceptable course of

social action. While the code legitimizes and masks military aggression for

the purpose of acquiring territory and resources, the will to purity has been

known to function as an independent parallel goal, as was the case in Nazi

Germany. Currently, there is a shift in temperament; genocide is increasingly

becoming less a matter of territory and resources, and more a matter of the

will to purity. In the days of early capital, when the riddle of production

was still unsolved, land/resource appropriations were the primary reason for

genocide. The examples are, of course, well known: the kulak genocide under

Stalin, or the aboriginal genocides in the US and Australia. In these cases,

the will to purity (ideological in the case of the former and racial in the

case of the latter), was secondary, and functioned primarily as the rhetoric

and the justification for the actions. Certainly, one can expect to see more

genocides typical of early capital in the third world, where for reasons of

imperial design, production cannot meet the demands of the population. The

same may be said for industrial nations in the process of restabilizing, as in

Bosnia. However, in the time of first world late capital with its consumer

culture, global media, global markets, and product excess, direct military

actions seem less necessary, because geographic territory is in the process of

being devalued.

With economic expansion via territorial occupation in a process of

disappearing, the will to purity (fitness) stands on its own as a prime reason

for genocide. Currently, genocidal nihilism tends toward elimination of

"deviant" subjectivity. This new form of nihilism is a much more subtle. The

day of the death camp designed for maximum efficiency is over, and in its

place are prisons, ghettos, and spaces of economic neglect. By making it seem

that the condition of extreme privation is a part of the natural order,

rational authority can eliminate populations without direct militarized

action. In some cases, the designated excess population will participate in

its own destruction as individuals are forced by artificially produced

physical need and environmental pressures to do whatever is necessary to

acquire withheld resources. In turn, these actions are replayed by the media

as representations of the dangerous natural qualities of given races,

ethnicities, or classes that must be controlled. Ironically, activities and

environments which were intentionally designed become representations of

nature, and proof of fitness theory.

Accidental opportunities also have great potential for exploitation.

In the early years of the AIDS crisis in the US, when the virus seemed to

affect only gay men, IV drug users, and Haitians, the Reagan Administration

exploited this opportunity to eliminate some "degenerate" populations; after

all, they were unnatural, impure, and unfit. By refusing to intervene or even

acknowledge the existence of the virus, the Reagan Administration allowed this

plague to take its course from 1981 to 1985. Not until it was realized that

AIDS would not stay confined to the designated deviant population was action

taken to contain the virus and control its symptoms.

Engineering the death of populations by neglect is not a recent

innovation. Certainly the Irish genocide at the time of the potato blight

indicates that this strategy has been around for while (although it should be

remembered that this genocide was also primarily done for land and resources,

and less for reasons of purity). Death by neglect is a haunting reminder that

Social Darwinism and the anti-welfare recommendations of Malthus and Spencer

in the time of early capital are not only alive and well, but are once again

gaining in strength.

For acts of passive genocide to be perceived as legitimate (natural),

the public must participate in eugenic ideology. It must believe that the

species is in a biological process that is striving for perfection through a

selection process. It must believe that some populations are more fit than

others. It must desire to emulate the fit, and to have faith that the unfit

will be eliminated. With this belief in place, social sectors of power only

have to contextualize the ideological system in a particular social moment to

see its design for a political-economy that is encoded directly into the flesh

come to fruition. Returning to the announcement from Ars Electronica, an

indicator of this process at work can be observed when we read: "Complex tools

and technologies are an integral part of our evolutionary 'fitness.' Genes

that are not able to cope with this reality will not survive the next

millennium." Who benefits from beliefs such as this? Those who profit most

from the development of technocratic pancapitalism. There is not a shred of

evidence that nature selects for genes with a predisposition for using complex

tools. In fact, if survival is taken as the signifier of fitness, those who

use complex tools are a small and stable minority of the world's population,

which would indicate that they are less fit. The majority and expanding

populations do not use complex tools. (What is truly odd is that such rhetoric

implies that "quality of life" is a characteristic that demonstrates fitness

and adaptability. This is a peculiar return to the Calvinist belief in finding

signs that s/he is in God's grace by h/er proximity to economic bounty). It

seems just as likely that complex tools are signs of devolution, or even the

source of species destruction. What is clear is that the power sectors which

currently engineer social policy are at the moment selecting for and rewarding

those who can use complex tools and punishing those who cannot, and that this

intentional process is at times passed off as a natural development.

The sweeping condemnation of those outside technoculture bodes badly

for less technologically saturated societies, since they presently appear to

be "unfit" according to this line of thinking. Traces of the colonial

narrative replay themselves in this rhetoric, since technoculture is not

accessible to the grand majority of nonwestern races and ethnicities. At the

same time, the colonial narrative is being reconfigured for postwar

technoculture. As women are brought into the bureaucratic and technocratic

workforce, fitness designated by biological characteristics is starting to be

replaced by fitness designated by behavior. This way, power sectors have an

alibi which masks the traces of the colonial narrative alive in technoculture,

but which can also allow them to embrace "fit" individuals that emerge from

"unfit" populations.

Conclusion

Two key problems occur in attempting to use evolutionary theory in the

analysis of cultural development. First, presenting cultural development as

analogous to biological development is like trying to hammer a square peg into

a round hole. There is little basis for likening a blind, groping process of

species configuration within an chaotic, uncontrolled environment to a

rationally engineered process of social and economic development within an

orderly, controlled environment. Retrograde notions of cultural development,

such as providence, progress, and manifest destiny, have more explanatory

power, because they at least recognize intentional design in cultural

dynamics, and at the very least they imply the existence of a power structure

within the cultural environment. Evolutionary theory, in its social sense, is

blind to the variable of power, let alone to the inequalities in its

distribution.

The second problem is historical. Since the application of

evolutionary theory has continuously been the foundational rhetoric and

justification of social atrocity for the last 150 years, why would anyone want

to open this Pandora's box yet again? At a time when biotech products and

services are being developed that will allow imperatives of political economy

to be inscribed directly into the flesh and into its reproductive cycle, why

would anyone want to use a theoretical system with little, if any, informative

power, that if deployed through pancapitalist media filters will promote

eugenic ideology? While it cannot be denied that all inquiries for the purpose

of gaining knowledge bring with them a high probability that the information

collected could be misused in its application, in the case of social

evolutionary theory, the historical evidence is overwhelming that it will be

misused. This situation is not fuzzy enough to make this role of the dice a

smart gambit, and the good intentions of individuals who engage this discourse

will not save it from capitalist appropriation and reconfiguration to better

serve its authoritarian and nihilistic tendencies.