Michael Lachney
SPaT
Fall 2013
Response Paper 1
Nihilism Cuts it Out; Live and In Person
In bed with dialogue Nietzsche jokes, “You are hard: Are we made of stone?”
(2001, 16). Silent and shocked, I am not, through hate the thought of being alone so stick
my finger in my pants and laugh at what may be meaningless – getting at it page after
page. Skimming like in the laboratory board meeting… he said it was meaningless
nothing. “So step outside lecture hall 33 and get on with it,” yells the robotic instinct
animal,
In order to prove to you that man is fundamentally a good-natured animal, I
would remind you of how credulous he has been for so long. Only now, quite
late and after tremendous self-conquest, has he become a distrustful animal. Yes,
man is now more evil than ever.’ I do not understand this: why should man be
more distrustful and evil now? ‘Because he now has a science – needs a
science.’ (Nietzsche 2001, 53)
Well good luck finding a neighbor, asshole. So class ends. But sure enough, bomb down
to Frans de Waal’s joint for some tea, and guess who is there playing a game with
calculators? No really/real guess! It’s all about the theatrical play, Nihilism: now in seven
acts, only a little of which God is dead. Directed by that dude who did Babies Day Out –
my buddy shoveled his driveway once, way before the turn to theater. So we sit down, tea
is on, and suddenly the door opens and this Dude holding a lab coat walks right in and
plops – like a “P-L-OOOO-P” – it down right where the tea should be.
Dude talks, “First, science cannot but be nihilist; it is the meaning of the world
deprived of meaning, a knowledge that is founded on the last ignorance,” and talks,
“knowing that the world is not to be interpreted, science transforms it, and through this
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transformation there passes the nihilistic exigency that is proper to it – the power of
nothing-ness that science has made into the most effective of tools, but with which it
plays a dangerous game,” Dude stops and we think he is done talking but we are wrong,
“for one cannot construct the universe without the possibility of its being destr…”
(Blanchot 1993, 146).
HE cuts this Dude off with a deep belchish-grown. Waal’s phone goes off and the
doctor on the other end suggests that belchish-growns warrant a visit to the med center.
This really pisses HIM off, phones and doctors are strictly prohibited from the auditory
space of the audition room. Chairs begin to fly, feet stomp, but that Dude just starts right
back up, “with its probity and
measured steps, science bears this very
contradiction within itself: it can produce a world in which science
would no longer be permitted to work according to the objectivity
of knowledge, but rather only according to the arbitrary
sense of the new world. In other words, by making science possible,
nihilism becomes science’s possibility – which means that, by it, the human
world can perish” (Blanchot 1993, 146). Oh no! Waal’s forgot about the tea!
Smoke fills the room, the doctor tells us to call the fire department, hangs up, and
everyone shuffles outside. In a matter of minutes Waal’s joint is completely burnt to the
ground. Fire trucks approach in the distance. HE turns to the Dude, “congratulations you
got the part, great commitment to character.” The two shake hands, trade calendars, and
feverously scribble in rehearsal dates. Waal’s is too busy with the ashes to care that he
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was not even consulted on filling this lead role. Fire people arrive from the future but the
fire is out. Surely Waal’s will get a lawsuit out of this one, but nothing is said. Its in the
past, so what does he really know?
On the contrary, there is no reason why a really big sign can’t read about the
body. Specifically articulated as “effective histories,” it could go out front: “The body is
molded by a great many distinct regimes;” A dance begins with beehive honey dripping
from the ceiling, in that it is worth at least some money, in that it is, and in that “it is
broken down by the rhythms of work, rest, and holiday; it is poisoned by food or values,
through eating habits and more law; it constructs resistance” (Foucault 1984, 87).
Suddenly there are many fires and many primatologists combing each other for the next
big bug to hit the field. But that cyborg has already studied these. Nevertheless the third
sex I guess - because of patriarchy the pages don’t wrinkle or is that just ware from
shipping and handling? “A small man is a paradox but still a man; but small women seem
to me, when compared to tall women, to belong to another sex’, said an old dance master.
A small woman is never beautiful – said old Aristotle” (Nietzsche 2001, 76). These
lawsuits go on for days, but the judge, can’t nail down an expert, day after day, even with
the printed page. So in walks a of Board Certified, Codified Bona-Fide family historian,
like hammers hitting each head she announces, “Effective” history differs from
traditional history in being without constants. Nothing in man- not even his body- is
sufficiently stable to serve as the basis for self-recognition or for understand-ing other
men. The traditional devices for construction a comprehensive view of history and for
retracing the past as patient and continuous development must be systematically
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dismantled” (Foucault 1984, 88). The judge is pissed; surely this professional is a RED or
is the shade pink-oh I don’t know, some archo-bastard in black.
Groups of knowledge are laid out on the courthouse lawn and flamed with
cardboard cutouts of Dennis Quaid from Dragon Heart. One by one each knowledge is
cut up, a cut-up, like in those books, rigorously cutting family unfamiliar, confusing
signifiers swirl down down and here. “History becomes “effective” to the degree that it
introduces discontinuity into our very being – as it divides our emotions, dramatizes our
instincts, multiplies our body and sets it against itself. “Effective” history deprives the
self of the reassuring stability of life and nature, it will not permit itself to be transported
by voiceless obstinacy towards a millennial ending. It will uproot its traditional
foundations and relentlessly disrupt its pretended continuity” (Foucault 1984, 88). The
body of evidence is placed in holding, another year before this one hits the stage.
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