Marco Senaldi<\/p>\n\n
\u00abEverything is recent\/<\/p>\n\n
Like a wake-up call\u00bb<\/p>\n\n
Pasquale Panella, Tubinga<\/em><\/p>\n\n At the slaughterhouse of the Spirit<\/em><\/p>\n\n There is a \u201cfetish\u201d which assails today\u2019s philosophy of history \u2013 the fetish of History itself. There is no historian, no intellectual, no school textbook, that is not hypersensitive to any view that even just hints at a \u201cmodernist\u201d, \u201chierarchical\u201d and \u201cverticist\u201d stance. Through a sort of (culturally) conditioned Pavlovian reflex, as soon as one hears talk of History in a universal, deterministic and linear sense, the dogs of \u201cepistemic pluralism\u201d begin to drool. Hypersensitivity becomes allergy, allergy repulses, repulsiveness repulses, to finally turn into a conclusive condemnation without appeal. <\/p>\n\n The condemnation of the crime goes hand-in-hand with the identification of the culprit \u2013 the philosopher more than any other responsible for this distortion of the disordered and anarchic flow of events \u2013 i.e. Hegel.<\/p>\n\n It is symptomatic that the scoffing at the \u201cempty logical-dialectical schemes\u201d from which the \u201cworst theologising providentialism\u201d supposedly derives was not, at the height of the decade of reflux, an aficionado<\/em> of postmodernism such as Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Lyotard. Rather, it was the thoroughbred Crocean (and Gentilean) Guido Calogero, who pens such a judgement in the Note to the present translation<\/em> of Hegel\u2019s Lectures on the Philosophy of History<\/em> (Vorlesungen \u00fcber die Philosophie des Geschichte<\/em>), dating from a truly \u201chistoric\u201d year, 1941. [1]<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n At first glance, Hegel\u2019s responsibilities in this matter seem beyond denial. It was in fact Hegel himself who, in the Lectures on the Philosophy of History<\/em>, now retranslated and recast in the Philosophy of Universal History<\/em>, ventured to reiterate that above the individual events of humanity stands \u201cphilosophical universal history\u201d \u2013 in such a way that the vicissitudes of humanity unconsciously aim at the stage in which \u201cspirit grasps itself\u201d.[2]<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n However, to call this stage a \u201ctheologising providentialism\u201d (or perhaps a \u201cverticising\u201d phallogocentrism) seems not only absurdly reductive, but pathetically misleading.[3]<\/a>. In the Lectures<\/em>, dating from the semester of 1822-1823, two centuries ago, Hegel was in fact inflexible in his emphasis on the difference between History and Spirit: the latter is not the \u201csubject\u201d of History, for the simple reason that by \u201csubject\u201d we must not mean the \u201cfirst\u201d moment, \u201cwhat is merely initial and immediate\u201d as if at the beginning there were already a Someone who \u201cknows everything\u201d: on the contrary, \u201cthe true\u201d is in fact only a secondary moment, \u201ca being that returns into itself\u201d. And, anticipating any criticism of a \u201clinear\u201d conception of History, he adds that whereas \u201cwhen we speak of a return, we ordinarily picture a departure from a place and a return to a [vada in un luogo e poi ritorni]prior location\u201d, ‘we must \u201creject\u201d this\u2019[4]<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n There is no one to guide any other, no one who knows the way, no Manzonian providence; but nor is there any \u201cgreat proletarian\u201d, any nomadic subject, any rhizome, any multiplicity so cunning as to escape its destiny. And what would its destiny be? Precisely this is the question-catastrophe that Hegel asked himself in the face of what he himself, in a famous but little-understood page, bluntly called \u201cthe butcher\u2019s bench of history\u201d. \u201cAs we look upon history as this slaughterhouse in which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of states, and the virtues of individuals are sacrificed, our thoughts are necessarily impelled to ask: to whom, to what final purpose, have these monstrous sacrifices been made?\u201d [5]<\/a>\u00bb.<\/p>\n\n Hegel\u2019s question resonates with the bitter taste of blood and scorn[6]<\/a>. For paradoxical as it may be, this philosopher, considered to be the champion of \u201cabsolute historicism\u201d, was the first to ask such an appalling and disconcerting question: what sense does History have if there is no \u201creturn\u201d, if there is no \u201chome\u201d, if the Spirit is a mass of misfortunes, negations, massacres, and if History itself, far from being a \u201cwork of art\u201d, is \u201cone of the most terrible paintings\u201d? The Spirit is not a dove carrying an olive branch in its beak, but a zombie<\/em> proceeding senselessly, even when you decapitate it, like the living-dead sailors of the Flying Dutchman in Pirates of the Caribbean<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n Histoire(s) de l\u2019art<\/em><\/p>\n\n If Hegel recognises that in order to understand the history of a period or a people, it is necessary to know its art[7]<\/a>, this means that Art is also a form of the Spirit, but only in the sense of a power that \u201cdissolves\u201d and \u201ctear[s] apart \u2026 the members\u201d of which ethical life is composed [8]<\/a>. The definition of \u201cslaughterhouse\u201d should therefore also be applied to art: it, too, is something \u201cspiritual\u201d in the \u201ccatastrophic\u201d sense: \u201cthe [[artistica]artistic] action is the violation of the peaceful earth, the trench which, animated by blood, evokes the departed spirits and these, thirsting for life, receive it in the action of self-consciousness\u201d[9]<\/a>. It is thus inevitable that we should conceive of history as a work of art and intertwine the history of peoples, events and cultures with that of art \u2013 provided that we keep well in mind what we have to accept under the definition of Art.<\/p>\n\n It would be interesting to note that it was precisely Hegel\u2019s most subversive readers, including Georges Bataille, who intuited that the only answer to historical negativity is the \u201cunusable negativity\u201d of art[10]<\/a>And perhaps only contemporary art, emancipated from the sensible to the point of reaching heights of \u201cdissolving self-consciousness\u201d, is today able to adequately reflect this extreme point of view. Indeed, when it rises to a broader vision of itself, and touches upon the historical becoming, it presents itself as an ensemble that is in no way \u201charmonious\u201d or resolved, but precisely as an ensemble of undead spirits\/spectres [Geister<\/em>]. <\/p>\n\n The case of Jean-Luc Godard\u2019s Histoire(s) du cin\u00e9ma<\/em> is emblematic. Initially conceived as a TV series, they constitute a vast and complex work, articulated in four sections, each subdivided into two parts, covering a total duration of almost nine hours; they were not screened as a single film but \u201cexhibited\u201d for the first time in an artistic context (Documenta 10 in Kassel in 1997), then re-released as a DVD and later as a volume. Composed of hundreds of fragments of other films, interpolated by pieces of text with the director\u2019s own words, they resemble a huge Situationist collage more than a completed masterpiece. In this sense, although they have attracted the attention of professional historians, such as Fran\u00e7ois Furet [11]<\/a>they are \u201cthoroughly\u201d contemporary: as Godard confessed, they try to \u201cencompass everything\u201d since \u201cHistory is the work of works\u201d, which is to say, \u201ca work of art, which is not generally admitted, except by Michelet\u201d.[12]<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n The reference to Jules Michelet, pupil of the Hegelian Victor Cousin and progenitor of French historiography in the nineteenth century, is no accident. The Histoire(s)<\/em> aspire to the representation of historical totality, in the Hegelian sense: the totality of which they speak is not a positive set containing all possible elements, but a \u201cnegative set\u201d, a whole that paradoxically excludes itself from itself, surviving as fragment and lack. [13]<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n For these reasons, the Histoire(s)<\/em> are something radically different from all documentaries and \u201cclassic\u201d histories of cinematographic art[14]<\/a>. In them, Godard repeatedly appears at work with meta cinematographic tools (recorders, computers, video cameras) and often uses fragments of cinema, video and found footage<\/em>. The material amalgamation of cinema emerges above all in the unexpected use of the moviola to disarticulate passages of famous films, with the result not only of slowing down their images (in the manner of Douglas Gordon), but also the pieces of text and the sound, obtaining almost three-dimensional, tactile, physical distortions; in certain moments, the director\u2019s own body serves as the screen for the images, symbolically offering itself \u201cas food\u201d for History and its representations. [15]<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n Is this not the present-day realisation most similar to the Hegelian image of the \u201cdeparted spirits\u201d of History, who try to come back to life through self-consciousness?<\/p>\n\n Catastrophes and superimpositions<\/em><\/p>\n\n History and Art, or rather history and the history of art, instead of still being conceived as two sets of which one encompasses the other, or as acephalous pluralities that occasionally intersect, should be understood in relation to this phenomenon of \u201creactivation\u201d of the past: \u201cwhen we have to do with the past \u2026 spirit finds itself in need of a present \u2026 [that is] ageless and enduring\u201d.[16]<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n About twenty years ago, Karlheinz Stockhausen\u2019s statement that the Twin Towers bombing of 11 September 2001 was a \u201cwork of art for the whole cosmos\u201d caused quite a stir.[17]<\/a>Re-reading his words carefully, however, we find no trace of insult; on the contrary, we can see how the composer intended to place the historical event and its artistic counter-effectuation in an inextricable relationship. In other words, Art is not at all the set of representations of events, which is to say, the description of things done. On the contrary: \u201cthings\u201d would not be \u201cdone\u201d, events would not be such, without the direct exposition of the \u201cbutcher\u2019s bench\u201d in which History consists. Through a sublime coincidence, which it would be foolish to attribute to mere chance, Stockhausen was so right that, in the agitated days following the bombing, a few people realised that indeed it \u201chad already become, to all intents and purposes, a work of art\u201d. In September 2001, Wolfgang Staehle had organised a solo exhibition in the Postmasters Gallery in New York, consisting of live video projections of cityscapes. Projected on a large scale (270 x 660 cm), as if they were panoramas that, instead of being painted, were simply filmed by live-cam<\/em>, the images concerned Berlin, Coburg and, fatally, the Manhattan skyline<\/em>. The camera pointed at the skyscrapers therefore faithfully recorded the disaster at the Twin Towers live. Although the exhibition was closed at the time of the attack, the gallery owner Magda Sawon, who had been alerted by the artist, was able to observe the tragedy within what was until then only an \u201cinnocent\u201d work of art. [18]<\/a>But neither Art nor History are ever \u201cinnocent\u201d: History and Art here literally overlapped, or rather \u2013 to use a photographic term \u2013 were superimposed one upon the other, generating the universal \u201cpresent\u201d in which the past is revitalised, resurrected, \u201crepeated\u201d and is with us, albeit always in an unresolved, enigmatic and ghostly form. These superimpositions, where the two lines of History and Art counter-determine themselves, or superimpose themselves in reverse, are the only authentic \u201cpresent-in-absence\u201d from which we can begin to learn. They should prompt us to rewrite the famous adage attributed to George Santayana, according to which \u201cthose who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it\u201d, in a new version: \u201cthose who do not want to relive the past must repeat the present\u201d. <\/p>\n\n [1]<\/a> G.W.F. Hegel, Lezioni sulla filosofia della storia<\/em>, vol. I, La razionalit\u00e0 della storia<\/em>, trad. it. a cura di G. Calogero e C. Faita, La Nuova Italia, 1941, p. XIV.<\/p>\n\n [2]<\/a> Id., Filosofia della storia universale. Secondo il corso tenuto nel semestre invernale 1822-23<\/em>, a cura di K.H. Ilting, K. Brehmer, H.N. Seelmann, ed. it a cura di S. Dellavalle, Einaudi, 2001, p. 85.<\/p>\n\n [3]<\/a> On this point, see Subject Lessons<\/em>. Hegel, Lacan, and the Future of Materialism<\/em>, ed. by R. Sbriglia, S. \u017di\u017eek, Northwestern University Press, 2020, p. 23.<\/p>\n\n [4]<\/a> Ibid., p. 28.<\/p>\n\n [5]<\/a> G.W.F. Hegel, Lezioni sulla filosofia della storia<\/em>, vol. I, cit., p. 68.<\/p>\n\n [6]<\/a> Le invettive di Calogero sarebbero assai pi\u00f9 adeguate quindi all\u2019Esquisse d\u2019un tableau historique des progr\u00e9s de l\u2019esprit humain<\/em> di Condorcet (1795); o alla Storia economica e sociale dell\u2019Impero romano<\/em> di marxisti come Rostovtzeff (1933); o ai romantici ideologi del \u2018ritorno\u2019 come Novalis; o persino a letture che vorrebbero essere pluraliste, e finiscono nel liberalismo pi\u00f9 \u2018teleologizzante\u2019, come quelle di Isaiah Berlin.<\/p>\n\n [7]<\/a> G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History,<\/em> cit., p. 81.<\/p>\n\n [8]<\/a> Ibid., pp. 48 e 53.<\/p>\n\n [9]<\/a> Id., The Phenomenology of Spirit<\/em>, Clarendon Press, 1977, p. 441.<\/p>\n\n [10]<\/a> B. Baugh, French Hegel. From Surrealism to Postmodernism <\/em>, Routledge, 2003, pp. 74-75. Bataille speaks of \u201cn\u00e9gativit\u00e9 sans \u00e9mploi\u201d in a letter to Alexandre Koj\u00e8ve, the author of the famous Paris lectures on Hegel, on which basis he published Introduction \u00e0 la lecture de Hegel<\/em>, Gallimard, 1947: in English, Introduction<\/em> to the Reading of Hegel<\/em>, Cornell University Press, 1980. <\/p>\n\n [11]<\/a> F. Furet, Lettre(s) \u00e0 Godard <\/em>[1997], \u00abCahiers du Cin\u00e9ma\u00bb, 2000, 6, pp. 6-9. Furet (1927-1997) was one of the greatest historians of the French Revolution.<\/p>\n\n [12]<\/a> J-L. Godard, Y. Ishaghpour, Arch\u00e9ologie du cinema et m\u00e9moire du si\u00e8cle<\/em>. Dialogue<\/em>, Farrago, 2000, p. 25.<\/p>\n\n [13]<\/a> Or, in the words of Bertrand Russell \u2013 called to comment on the paradox that bears his name \u2013 History is the \u201cset of all sets that are not members of themselves\u201d.<\/p>\n\n [14]<\/a> For instance M. Scorsese, M.H. Wilson, Scorsese on Scorsese<\/em>, Cahiers du Cin\u00e9ma, 2011.<\/p>\n\n [15]<\/a> With reference to Histoire(s)<\/em>, Giorgio Agamben has spoken of \u201cthe power to interrupt\u201d: see G. Agamben, Difference and Repetition: On Guy Debord\u2019s Films<\/em>, in Guy Debord and the Situationist International<\/em>. Texts and Documents<\/em>, ed. by T. McDonough, The MIT Press, 2002, pp. 313-320. <\/p>\n\n [16]<\/a> G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History<\/em>, cit., p. 137. One impressive case of \u201creactivation\u201d was the re-enactment<\/em> of the storming of the Winter Palace staged in Moscow on 7 November 1920, three years after its \u201creal\u201d storming in 1917; see S. \u017di\u017eek, Revolution Must Strike Twice<\/em>, in London Review of Books, vol. 24, n. 14, 25 July 2002. 14.<\/p>\n\n
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