the philosophy of absolute extinction

April 11, 2024 5:17 AM

Philosopher Ben Ware has been giving some thought to the politics of the end of the world, and has written a new book, On Extinction (Verso), to talk about it. But the end is coming fast and maybe you don't have time for a whole book, so let's read some essays instead! "Nothing but the End to Come" brings together Walter Benjamin, Kafka, de Sade and Extinction Rebellion to suggest that all our language about the end feeds "into a politics of passive annihilation."

In "The Death Drive at the End of the World," Ware points out a contradiction at the heart of Freud. The death drive--a sort of psychologizing of the second law of thermodynamics--is about the mind seeking a state of permanent rest. Yet that seeking is a state of permanent nervous repetition, an unrestful mental brownian motion. His argument begins to open up and flower with a critique of anti-natalism--the idea it would be better (for us, for earth) if we'd never been born--and how that absolutely centers us, makes us the star of the show, in a pathological way.

"Beginning Again at the End", a longer piece, argues (as is suggested in the prior two) that this is all down to capitalism, really. In an echo of Mark Fisher, "because there is never anything secure about the capitalist model, this apocalyptic fear becomes part of capitalism’s own chronic condition: the fantasy of capital is inseparable from the anxiety about the apocalypse of capital." We find ourselves with two possible outcomes, that we disappear, or that we transform.

But what shall we transform into? I want to end on Ware's piece on Francis Bacon, "Distortion as a Path to Reality:" 'Almost all of Bacon’s successful figures appear to have life flowing out of them; and yet strangely, and for the most part, they are able to endure and maintain themselves in this state of devastation. Indeed, their devastation – which is to say, their deformity and physical imperfection – appears to be precisely the source of their strength. It is here, we might say, that Bacon presents the viewer with a new redemptive aesthetics of ugliness.'

posted by mittens (4 comments total)

From sadism, then, to masochism—for it is the latter which characterizes the psychic landscape of much of today’s ecological discourse. The problems with the universalizing, ecological “we” should now, of course, be fully clear: a faulty metaphysics which claims that all of “us” are equally responsible for the sixth mass extinction; that our destructive “lifestyles” are what are destroying the planet; that it is “civilization” itself—and specifically a civilization in thrall to “consumerism”—which is killing the human race (criticisms that are just as likely to emerge from the eco-alt-right as they are from the eco-soft-left). Following this logic, the only solution to our present problems appears to be a kind of eco-depressive hyper-moralism: an accelerated form of pseudo-authentic, “anti-consumerist,” “back to the land” “green living,” which turns out to be a parody of committed action and self-realization. Not only does such a position fail to register the true extent of the economic and political forces driving the climate and ecological emergency, it also seeks to instrumentalize this emergency: using it as the very means by which the “good subject” is able to save his or her own soul.

I don't mind this as criticism, especially as an introduction to alternatives, but so far it raises the question whether he supports the anti-human groups he often mentions in detail. Not that it matters really, nor if he was raised by crows, but self-abnegating groups are like cults and are never a less confusing commitment.
posted by Brian B. at 8:12 AM on April 11

bookmarking all of these, thanks!
posted by _earwig_ at 6:45 PM on April 11

I guess I'm pretty ignorant because I never heard that Freud posited a "death drive," but on the other hand I'm knowledgeable enough to not be surprised to hear it either. Freud was just so full of his 19th-century-elite-Euro-white-guy views and opinions here that it was impossible for him to have a worthwhile opinion about what was going on with that. He has noticed the First Noble Truth, and, lacking any insight into the other Three (or any useable standins), let alone into the Eightfold Path (or anything that works like it), he concludes that death is the only exit from suffering. Freud on suffering is like Leonardo on jet fighter design. Just don't.

Trying to lay perpetual insecurity at the feet of capitalism is also a fundamentally misguided exercise. Existence within the world is of a nature to be insecure: it's a way of saying the First Noble Truth. Capitalism is bad because it uses this fact to empower some people to profit from the suffering of others, which is to say that it incentivizes the creation of unnecessary suffering. Alternatives to capitalism will not make life secure, but the insecurities will be different and (we hope) less bad.

Nonetheless I thank OP for the introduction to this thinker, to whom I will return at some point I think.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 10:53 AM on April 12 [2 favorites]

Agreed, Aardvark Cheeselog. Freud served some purpose at his time, but baically pointless now.

We've many claims by Mann & others that scaring people causes inaction, but really historical evidence suggests that scaring people works, ala the cold war & test ban treaties.
posted by jeffburdges at 6:59 AM on April 18