Page 60 - Vinkler, Jonatan, Ana Beguš and Marcello Potocco. Eds. 2019. Ideology in the 20th Century: Studies of literary and social discourses and practices. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 60
Ideology in the 20th Century: studies of literary and social discourses and practices
final fulfilling of our life, and even the very existence of the interval be-
tween tick and tock.
Therefore, on the occasion of Barnes’ novel, one can speak of the
sense, but also of the nonsense of the end. This novel will embarrass those
who love the illusion of the sequences and they will have to accept the mi-
mesis of contingency. Novels, of course, have beginnings, ends, and po-
tentiality, even if the world does not have them, but Barnes’ novel man-
ages to demonstrate how the subject finds himself disagreeable with both
life and fiction—if, on the occasion of this story, it is even possible to
speak of such a clear difference between them. Tony is an anti-existential-
ist because he wants to replace the chaos of the present with the past, just
to find that this chaos has always existed. Nevertheless, the skeptic will
probably remind us that the limitations of human truth enable social life.
60 We freeze the chaos and the complexity of our world, so the question is
what kind of plausible thoughts we can have. Tony Webster seems to be a
sheer proof of the belief that there is a transcendent ego within ourselves,
some ‘I’ that is separated from our physical existence because its thoughts
are its prostitutes (as in the famous Diderot’s statement). Is it necessary to
say that the ego is defeated here because it has never found proper con-
junction with the exterior?
The novel of Webster’s boredom allows me to continue to bother with
the question: when does the end come? It comes when the feeling of im-
potence becomes a normal state of being, claims Frank Furedi (2002,
145). Tony Webster cannot, no matter how much he tries, change the
conditions of his mistakes; the errors themselves and their consequences
cannot be changed anyway. The impression is that he retreats in all those
instances where his opinion collides with what allegedly disables it. He
resembles us when continues to produce meaning even when he knows
that it does not exist. Barnes’ novel—or more precisely the narration of
Tony Webster—hence resembles Baudrillard’s perfect crime:
We cannot project more order or disorder into the world than there is. We
cannot transform it more than it transforms itself. This is the weakness of
our historical radicality. All the philosophies of change, the revolutionary,
nihilistic, futurist utopias, all this poetics of subversion and transgression so
characteristic of modernity, will appear naive when compared with the in-
stability and natural reversibility of the world. Not only transgression, but
even destruction is beyond our reach. We shall never, by an act of destruc-
tion, achieve the equivalent of the world’s accidental destruction … Excess
is the world’s excess, not ours. It is the world that is excessive, the world that
is sovereign (Baudrillard 1996, 11).
final fulfilling of our life, and even the very existence of the interval be-
tween tick and tock.
Therefore, on the occasion of Barnes’ novel, one can speak of the
sense, but also of the nonsense of the end. This novel will embarrass those
who love the illusion of the sequences and they will have to accept the mi-
mesis of contingency. Novels, of course, have beginnings, ends, and po-
tentiality, even if the world does not have them, but Barnes’ novel man-
ages to demonstrate how the subject finds himself disagreeable with both
life and fiction—if, on the occasion of this story, it is even possible to
speak of such a clear difference between them. Tony is an anti-existential-
ist because he wants to replace the chaos of the present with the past, just
to find that this chaos has always existed. Nevertheless, the skeptic will
probably remind us that the limitations of human truth enable social life.
60 We freeze the chaos and the complexity of our world, so the question is
what kind of plausible thoughts we can have. Tony Webster seems to be a
sheer proof of the belief that there is a transcendent ego within ourselves,
some ‘I’ that is separated from our physical existence because its thoughts
are its prostitutes (as in the famous Diderot’s statement). Is it necessary to
say that the ego is defeated here because it has never found proper con-
junction with the exterior?
The novel of Webster’s boredom allows me to continue to bother with
the question: when does the end come? It comes when the feeling of im-
potence becomes a normal state of being, claims Frank Furedi (2002,
145). Tony Webster cannot, no matter how much he tries, change the
conditions of his mistakes; the errors themselves and their consequences
cannot be changed anyway. The impression is that he retreats in all those
instances where his opinion collides with what allegedly disables it. He
resembles us when continues to produce meaning even when he knows
that it does not exist. Barnes’ novel—or more precisely the narration of
Tony Webster—hence resembles Baudrillard’s perfect crime:
We cannot project more order or disorder into the world than there is. We
cannot transform it more than it transforms itself. This is the weakness of
our historical radicality. All the philosophies of change, the revolutionary,
nihilistic, futurist utopias, all this poetics of subversion and transgression so
characteristic of modernity, will appear naive when compared with the in-
stability and natural reversibility of the world. Not only transgression, but
even destruction is beyond our reach. We shall never, by an act of destruc-
tion, achieve the equivalent of the world’s accidental destruction … Excess
is the world’s excess, not ours. It is the world that is excessive, the world that
is sovereign (Baudrillard 1996, 11).
