The Last Night by Federico Campagna

Author:Federico Campagna [Campagna, Federico]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78279-194-2
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Published: 2013-10-25T04:00:00+00:00

Civilisations of the Self

We talked about Civilisation as the work of a tailor, but who is this ‘invisible tailor’ we referred to?

As in the example of local Mafia tenants – which we compared with really existing Civilisations – who is this ghostly equivalent of a Mafia ‘Don’, whose power they represent on Earth?

During our earlier discussion about Religion and radical atheism, we identified this entity as that of a normative abstraction. Now, after our brief exploration of the connections between Civilisation and narrative, we can expand our description of what a normative abstraction is and how it acts over human lives. Normative abstraction is the name that we can use to define an idea or a set of ideas which individuals or collectives place above themselves as the ultimate frame and scope of reference for their earthly existences. When applied to human collectivities, the actual translation of the structure of sense of a normative abstraction (we could say, its potential narrative) into the materiality of human and natural life (that is, its actual narrative) can be described as the process of a Civilisation. In this sense, we can identify a number of normative abstractions that, throughout history, have given rise to as many Civilisations: God and theocracies, Progress and communisms, Humanity and liberalisms, and so on. Most often, Civilisations have acted as the servants of two or more masters, bringing into practice a combination of the immortal designs of several normative abstractions.

If we zoom past the grand scale of human Civilisations and closer to the microcosms of specific human collectivities, we find the same dynamic at play in the field commonly defined as populism. Although often mistaken for a merely derogative political adjective, populism is the political phenomenon which produces a convergence of several different demands – often seemingly irreconcilable with each other – into one, abstract umbrella-concept, which acts as an empty container (or, more precisely, an empty signifier) capable of holding them all together within one form. This empty signifier – often symbolised by a flag or a slogan – exists as a normative abstraction, and acts as the political equivalent of a Civilisation over the demands that it contains, binding them together and ultimately re-defining them in terms that exceed the original. Like the combination of normative abstractions and Civilisation, the umbrella of a populist empty signifier exists and acts as an invisible tailor, sewing together, cutting away, creating shapes and tight clothes within which to contain human lives.

Why did we expand our exploration of normative abstractions and Civilisations to the seemingly remote shores of political populism?

The reason for this detour lies in the perhaps surprising parallel between such dynamics and the unfolding of our mortal, fragile, individual lives. The narrative game enacted by normative abstractions, populist empty signifiers and Civilisations does not only take place outside of, but also inside us. Like the wide face of the Earth itself, our own existential and psychological territories are traversed by and crammed with countless populations, which are not composed of humans but of our drives, desires, needs, dreams, etc.

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