Beyond Biopolitics: A New Politics of Death

Political Absurdities (Part Two)

By Arpad Szakolczai

The previous blog argued that the current politics of gender and sexuality, which have come to dominate the political agenda, for some very – very – strange reasons, constitute a new, and quite lethal, intensification of biopolitics. The centrality of biopolitics to hypermodernity is underlined by the public health measures – just as strange and frightening – that were implemented during the so-called Covid epidemics. However, even this is not all, as the effort to socially control and manipulate human life processes is being taken further, in a more threatening, even outright sinister manner, no longer just being about life, but directly about death. In introducing the theme I’ll again use a personal anecdote.

When we moved to Ireland, in 1998, two of our sons were of high-school age, and they had to take a “Religion” class. We were wondering what exactly they would learn there, but the answer we received, through their stories, was unexpected and astonishing. They mostly talked about three themes in class: abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty. We were very troubled, but being new to the country, did not want to raise an objection; we were also still naïve. The main problem was not simply that these were not themes we considered vital, or even appropriate, for teenage boys, but that all three were concerned with death, and even worse: with actively putting people, or would-be people, to death. The discussion of the death penalty obviously was against death; there the main problem was why this extremely specific and rare instance had to be discussed in this class. However, the abortion and euthanasia discussions were directly about inducing support for these practices – because, as good subjects of the left liberal establishment, then emerging in Ireland also, teachers – who were, as a group, the most loyal supporters of communism in the bad old days, we never forgot this, even though for a long time we did not understand the reasons – of course supported this position.

The problem, to make it clear, in its enormity and atrocity, is not whether abortion and euthanasia are themes proper for teenage boys – though they certainly aren’t; not even whether we, as parents, supported the position of the teachers – though we certainly did not; but why this evident obsession with death – and, even worse, with putting people to death; or, with premeditated, purposeful, conscious killing?

In the whole history of mankind, there are not many modalities of such an act. Acts of war don’t qualify, as while people certainly kill others in war, the person who commits the act is also in danger of suffering it; they are part of the fight, so everyone takes chances. Similarly, even murderers and criminals most often do not want to kill – only to steal, for example; or do not premeditate the killing; or suffer some danger in the course of killing – including that of being caught. The only act strictly comparable to abortion and euthanasia that comes to mind is sacrifice.

Here we reach a theme which is extremely important and particular, anthropologically, sociologically, historically, and even theologically. Sacrifice, as a ritual, is one of the most widespread and much analysed practices in the history of mankind. Hardly any culture in history was without some kind of ritual of sacrifice. Durkheim considered sacrifice as the origin of religion, and of society; René Girard considered sacrifice as the origin of culture. Both attributed a primary role to human sacrifice; yet, many social scientists and anthropologists now even deny that human sacrifice ever existed – though this claim seems preposterous. Sacrifice also has a fundamental connection with the rise of Christianity, in a manifold and also paradoxical way, as Christians refused to accept the legitimacy of any sacrificial offering, this being a prime reason for the prosecution of Christians in the first centuries, but Jesus’ death is also considered a kind of sacrifice, and every Catholic mass, even today, repeats a sacrificial offering in recognition of it. And, indeed, certainly connected to the rise of Christianity, the practice of sacrificial offerings, widespread before, simply disappeared in late Antiquity – though it returned, with manifold significance, with the rise of Islam.

Without going into details and doing justice to the complexity of the issues, this essay only singles out for attention one central aspect: that sacrifice is an act of destruction; and in particular, the destruction of a living being: a purposeful, ritualistic destruction of life. The question concerns the meaning of such an act; and its possible connection to biopolitics and the obsession with purposeful death, so central to the current left-liberal establishment.

I can’t resolve this issue; I cannot even make a suggestion about the reasons. But the question must be posed, and taken seriously. The absurdity of contemporary politics must be recognised; and a crucial part of the broad historical absurdity of modern politics is the enormous amount of destruction it perpetuated, implying not just the World Wars but the Napoleonic Wars, and the Thirty Years Wars – and that was basically the starting point. Destruction, since then, has become the buzzword of economic theory and business schools, in the form of “creative destruction”, which could – and should – be considered as part of the way in which destruction, including purposeful voluntary self-mutilation and self-destruction, is increasingly justified in our days, as the creation of something “new”; a way to promote “change”.

I will conclude this essay by bringing in the ideas of a thinker I consider particularly important, though little known, Roberto Calasso. Calasso was the Italian publisher of Girard’s book, considering his ideas about sacrifice particularly important. However, while Girard spoke highly of Durkheim, Calasso was a most resolute critic of Durkheim’s ideas and entire approach, considered it completely mistaken, turning instead to the ideas of Mauss, recognising that Mauss was by no means a continuer of Durkheim’s approach, as mainstream sociology and anthropology pretends him to be. Calasso also came to consider modernity, since and with the French Revolution, as implementing a sacrificial mechanism, championed in the first instance by experimental science (its laboratories being not different from slaughter-houses) and the economy (with tight connections between exchange, substitution, and sacrifice). Yet, he also repeatedly argued that the more the sacrificial character of modernity became evident, the more certain circles of modern thinking came to deny even the existence of sacrifice.

Calasso kept reflecting on the meaning of the sacrificial act until the end. His posthumous book Under the Eyes of the Lamb, which I consider as the last and 12^th book of his great Opera, revolves around the sacrificial lamb, as depicted in the famous Gent altarpiece of the van Eyck brothers, and the Book of Revelation, offering the stunning one-liner that this book “is the self-destruction of Christianity” (47).

An even more stunning analysis of a related image is offered around the end of his tenth book, The Book of All Books, devoted to the Old Testament/ Torah. The image, from Dura Europos, called “The Sacrifice of Conon”, depicts a priest, in the act of performing a sacrifice. The viewer, in a striking manner, assumes the position of a sacrificial victim, so the image is a sheer impossibility – as if such a victim could, after the act, contemplate its execution. According to Calasso, “there isn’t a figure in Ancient paintings which matches in power” this image of the officiating sacrificial priest. “If there is a gaze that can petrify, it is his. […] this gaze, which seems to come from a very remote place, has an peremptory gravity” (459).

Dura Europos, situated in what is now Syria, was a unique liminal place, in a border zone between the West and the East: between Romans, Greeks, Persians, Parthians, Palmyrans, and Jews. The city was founded around 300BC and abandoned 256-7AD, containing temples and representations of the Olympian and Palmyran deities; of Mithra, Jesus, and Yahweh. It was such a unique place that even its Synagogue was decorated by frescoes. Calasso writes that “In this caravan city even divine matters had to be represented in the same language, recalling the lingua franca used by merchants of passage. Between the bearded young man who holds a roll of the Torah in the Synagogue and sacrificial priest [discussed above …] there was an obvious affinity, as between close relatives” (460-1). So, in this extremely liminal place, at the interstices of all kind of cultures and religious traditions, the impossible evidently happened, and a sacrificial priest was depicted, in the act, with knife in hand, from the perspective of the sacrificed. But what was he actually looking at? And what was he thinking? And who depicted him, with such eerie realism?

Dura Europos was occupied and destroyed by ISIS in between 2011 and 2014. Another incident-accident, another “cunning trick of history”, to render the understanding of modernity, and the sacrificial destructiveness at its heart, more difficult. But we must persist.