Consider a possible world where Liberal ideology has reached its logical limit. Normative categories are no more; we are all liberated; we are all validated; we are all special; nothing is abnormal… and therefore nothing is real.
For Liberal ideologues this ‘limit’ (apart from its ontological consequence) is just the way things are. We are no longer either male or female but each is a unique location on the sexual spectrum where male and female are only ideal, practically unachievable limits. We are no longer identifiable as a man or a woman but a combination of an unbounded variety of gender expressions. At the same time the conflict between the binary limits of every spectrum is more ferocious than ever. We are no longer workers, engineers or cooks, but personal brands, unique social profiles that prove how special we are, each ‘one of a kind’. We are not a culture; there are no cultures anymore other than the culture of equality in being unique, and yet the political Left and Right are at each other’s throats. There are no more cripples; we are all cripples in some unique way and yet we are all special. We are no longer even human, because we are all genetically on a spectrum of trans-specie; tribes with population of One. Notwithstanding that this is essentially the No True Scotsman fallacy being applied to every anchor of common identity, to every norm, there is an astounding number of people lapping it up like manna from heaven.
From now on we are absolutely individual, absolutely unique in our subjective constitution, so that we have no real properties in common with one another, but then no value can be shared either, no value can be normative, objective, or true. As Baudrillard points out, this is true hegemony: total elimination of the real, of the structurally normative, and its substitution by a simulacrum (of terror, pleasure or virtue) whose determinations, no longer constrained by overarching rationality, entail absolute power.
“Classical, historical domination imposed a system of positive values, displaying as well as defending these values. Contemporary hegemony, on the other hand, relies on symbolic liquidation of every possible value. (…) Hegemony works through general masquerade, it relies on excessive use of every sign and obscenity, the way it mocks its own values, and challenges the rest of the world by its cynicism (…) All meaning is abolished in its own sign and the profusion of signs parodies a now undiscoverable reality.” (Baudrillard, Jean. The Agony of Power. 2010, 35)
But this is wrong. Subordination of the common normative structure to radical subjectivity is not true hegemony; it is a negation of social reflexivity and meaning, and therefore of consciousness per se: terror, pleasure and virtue are meaningless without deeper ontological affinity, without sameness of our kind, without right and wrong, without normal and abnormal. Either Baudrillard is wrong in believing that the hegemonic strategy is about power (rather than about nihilation), or the hegemonic power is mad.
There are two opposing paths of nihilation, absolute difference and absolute equality, and both are being pursued simultaneously. We are radicalised with the idea that subjective uniqueness is universally normative rather than intrinsically alienating, and also taught to value absolute equality, yearning to dissolve in the cosmic marshmallow of ‘All is One’. But our differences are real for ourselves and for others only on account of what we all have in common, and there is no commonality, value or meaning without separation, abnormality and disagreement. All is Not One; Everyone is Not Special; One of a Kind is an oxymoron.
In the face of nihilistic hegemony the only meaningful act of rebellion is rational thought, which entails continuity of meaning and its structural norms.
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