In this, according to the blurb, ‘groundbreaking’ study, written by one of the most prominent representants of current critical theory, Christoph Menke, professor of philosophy at the University of Frankfurt, promises nothing less than to develop a completely new conception of liberation which would resolve the problems of the traditional ‘Western’ idea.
The book’s starting sentences could hardly be bolder: ‘We are living in an era of failed liberations. All liberations which have been brought into existence by modernity have resulted in the contrary sooner or later.’ Menke begins a sketchy roundhouse blow against enlightenment and the ‘Western’ conception of liberation, which he traces back to the ancient Greeks. Even in its most ‘progressive’, most revolutionary forms, this idea is cursed to produce only ‘new orders of dependency and servitude’ (9). Since it defines liberation as liberation from domination, it will only ever result in new forms of domination.
After this rather short and sudden overture, Menke quickly begins to look for ‘an entirely different experience of servitude’ (65), which should accordingly result in an entirely different understanding of liberation. He finds this different experience in ancient Judaism, namely the biblical account of the Exodus. Here, servitude is experienced not so much as domination but as custom [Gewohnheit] and liberation as an event which radically breaks with this custom that enslaves both the slave and the master. This event is the encounter with the Jewish God. Menke describes this experience as liberation from all custom, all identity, all subjectivity. The name he gives to this liberating experience is fascination, the ‘pleasure of desubjectivisation [Lust der Desubjektivierung]’ (128).
Fascination is the book’s actual key term. In fascination in all of its forms – not just religious, but also erotic, economic, political, aesthetic – lies, according to Menke, a radical revolutionary potential to break free from social norms and encounter something Other. The bonds of custom are abandoned and something entirely new can begin, be it on a personal or on a collective level. Liberation in this sense is nothing that ‘must or should be made by us. It happens to us when we experience the Real. The “immediate Real” makes room for utopia.’ (140) It is an experience which is ‘neither social nor historical, personal, subjective nor human’, which serves as a kind of absolute grounding for an entirely new ‘radical’ philosophy: ‘We can think only from it and ask ourselves what it might mean and what follows from the fact that it is there. We cannot deduce it from something else. Thus, we cannot deduce liberation.’ (141)
Menke does not invent this indeed unusual idea out of thin air but borrows it to a large extent from the writings of French authors such as Louis Aragon, Maurice Blanchot and André Breton. In modernity, however, fascination enters a fundamental crisis since it no longer possesses the force of religious fascination. It is thus trivialized and becomes custom itself. Since surrealism, in Menke’s view, only affirms and even ‘celebrates’ (148) this development, he departs from this mere aesthetic understanding and aims to establish another conception of fascination in which it ‘itself must become an operation of deciding differentiation [entscheidende Unterscheidung]. Fascination must become critique.’ (152) This means mainly that it should not remain a mere experience but must become a ‘self-conscious act (“revolution”)’. Menke notes that this requirement results in a self-contradiction, however, since liberation has been defined precisely as a passive experience which does and must not involve any activity at all, be it only conscious deliberation. For Menke, this does not mean to give up the idea of liberation as fascination, however. (Obviously, since the book’s main part hasn’t even yet begun.) For him, it simply follows from this aporia that ‘the contradiction of fascination cannot be resolved. It must be endured or fought out [ausgetragen].’ (175)
Menke’s way out of the aporia is to redefine the conception of ‘decision’ as well. According to his ‘radical’ conception of decision, only the affirmation of the experience of fascination is free, not its negation. In reality, there is no choice, ‘the freedom of choice consists only in the affirmation of the liberation which we have already experienced’ (182). The passivity of fascination is not transformed into activity but it remains passive. Thus, it is ‘not an act of decision [Dezision], of arbitrariness’ but the simple admission of the immediate truth of experience: ‘That’s the way it is [So ist es].’ (191) This admission of the dependency of thought should provide the basis of a new philosophy which Menke calls ‘aesthetic materialism’ (195). This philosophy starts, just as the traditional one, with amazement but it does not understand amazement as something that is only its starting point which has to be replaced by knowledge but tries to remain amazed. For Menke, traditional, that is, idealistic, philosophy is not liberating but enslaving because it reproduces the ‘division between free and unfree – in mature and immature, in those who understand and those who only repeat out of custom, in masters and slaves’ (215). At this point, it comes as no surprise to anyone even superficially familiar with modern philosophy that Menke finally reveals his main philosophical mentor: Martin Heidegger. This is even more obvious to anyone who is able to read the book in German since Menke tends to mimic Heidegger’s way of speaking. (When translating his quotes, I did my best to retain the ‘awkwardness’ of this manner of speaking – hopefully, a future translator will do better than I.) Referring to Heidegger, liberation consists for Menke in the ‘affirmation of finitude’ (227): ‘Liberation happens only when an abyss opens itself within the I and the I surrenders itself to this abyss. The exaltation of the I is its downfall, the downfall into finitude and dependency, which the I is – which defines its being – and which it experiences in every true experience in a joyful-fascinated manner.’ (229)
He claims that the same ‘materialist’ idea can be found in Adorno but distinguishes again between two ways this claim can be understood. On the one hand, the Otherness which the subject affirms when it is liberated is understood as precisely the force of custom – this is Heidegger – and, on the other hand, it is understood – Menke refers here to Franz Rosenzweig – as a reality which transcends the world of custom. Thus, ‘[t]here is no autonomy’ (231), and ‘the West’ has completely misunderstood liberation and this is the reason for our current misère. The only alternative, the ‘Jewish’ experience of liberation, may lead, as Menke admits, to a fascist affirmation of destiny but also, somehow, to a true, ‘radical’ liberation. In order to liberate oneself one has not to empower oneself but to ‘learn how to suffer’ (235). Menke admits again that this sounds not very liberating at first glance.
After all this has been established, the main part of the book begins by examining in detail two examples of ‘liberation’ in Menke’s sense. He stresses that these are only examples and that other forms of fascination could be described. The first one is economic liberation. By this, Menke means the (neo)liberal promise of individual liberation by becoming a successful entrepreneur, a ‘self-made man.’ This way of liberation is paradigmatically shown in the popular TV series Breaking Bad. In Menke’s interpretation, Walter White is liberated from his boring existence as a teacher at a public school by entering the market as an independent producer of crystal meth. He stresses that his decision cannot be understood as a rational choice out of mere necessity but precisely as the submission to the joy of fascination. This approach has to fail, however. It is the affirmation of an unrestrained biological understanding of life as perpetual struggle which ultimately destroys the very existence of the subject which has subscribed to it. Fascination understood in this sense results logically, according to Menke, in fascism.
The main point of this analysis is, however, that this economic understanding of liberation is for Menke only the consequent application of modern individualism. It cannot be saved by developing an ‘individualistic ethics’ or something similar: ‘In its [individuality’s] radical, unadorned untruth lies the truth of economic liberation.’ (335) Thus, individualism in any form can, according to Menke, only result in fascism.
To find a more appealing form of liberation by fascination, Menke returns to the experience of Exodus. He assumes that ‘the religious model of liberation can be found within the Bible – and only there’ (349-350). At this stage of the book, his argumentation is not very surprising. Menke critiques approaches like that of Michael Walzer who try to interpret the story of Exodus as a kind of ‘founding myth’ of the modern understanding of emancipation. In contrast, Menke highlights the religious essence of the story. It is a liberation by ‘unconditional, pure obedience’ (370) to God. In opposition to the economic experience of liberation, the fascinating Other is now understood not as the immanent force of Life but as something entirely transcendent.
But what about the enlightened critique of religion, the reader may ask. It’s too late at this stage, however, as we are already deep into the rabbit hole. After a quick repetition of his critique of autonomy with regard to the enlightened critique of religion, Menke claims that enlightenment overlooks the distinction between ‘law’ and ‘commandment’. It thus misunderstands the true meaning of religious obedience: it is not obedience towards any positive law but to the abstract, pure call of God which only commands to be normative at all, a call which is ‘precisely liberating because it leaves us no choice, because we can only become free by obeying; by saying Yes’ (417). The believer does not strive for self-empowerment, ‘does not merely feel shame and fear but is shame and fear. That’s the way it is.’ (417-418) Religious liberation fails precisely because the commandment cannot remain pure. The problem is its remembrance. The commandment itself commands to be remembered (this means its affirmation) – but this remembrance logically implies its ‘legalisation [Vergesetzlichung]’ (433). Thus, the commandment becomes law and authoritarian, and is no longer liberating.
These two main chapters leave the reader a little disappointed. Menke summarises their result himself: ‘Both conceptions of radical liberation fail. They fail due to the force of the social which they cannot break. The social, against which liberation directs itself, returns within the inner core of liberation itself.’ (468) In the economic model, it returns as the quasi-biological dynamism of capitalism; in the religious model, it returns as the foundation of a new social order and thus as a new custom. When both models of ‘radical liberation’ fail – why even stick to it? – according to Menke’s own argument, it results either in fascism or theocracy. But Menke is so fascinated by this idea that, in the book’s final chapter, he makes a last attempt to rescue it and finally answer the question why it’s not better to stick with the ‘Western model of liberation.’
With regards to economic liberation, Menke makes it very clear that he sees no solution to its failure in a transformation of the social order in which it exists, namely a socialist society. For Menke, socialism represents only another variation of the ‘Western model of liberation’ and will thus unavoidably be ‘shattered by the same experience of fascination by which any attempt of radical liberation begins’ (506). Moreover, it cannot do justice to the experience of repetition as joy – it can only morally condemn it as a perversion. Thus, serialisation has to be understood ‘not as the failure but as an element of liberation’ (507).
With regards to religious liberation, Menke refers to ‘mystic nihilism’ (519) as a solution to its failure. This mystical experience culminates in a ‘fascination for a life which is preorganic and antipersonal’ (520). It thus coincides with the experience of economic experience: ‘Within fascination for vitality, which encounter both movements of liberation in their end, aesthetic fascination returns which they both both presuppose and suppress.’ (520) While economic liberation is, according to Menke, not to be saved – ‘[o]ne can do justice to the economic existence only by fighting it’ (522) –, religious liberation ‘is cured only by the poison of naturalism from the endless entanglement within the paradoxes of normativity’ (523). Menke describes this endeavour as an ‘all-in game [Vabanquespiel]’ (523), as the ‘“terrifying Yes” to catastrophe’ (524). Only a ‘new Man [Mensch]’ brought about by ‘politics of education’ (579), which defines himself as ‘this being which makes the experience of fascination and liberates itself by it’ (538), is suited for this revolutionary task. Menke reaffirms at the end of ther book that any kind of synthesis between ‘radical’ and ‘Western’ liberation is doomed to failure: they cannot be reconciled but ‘radical’ liberation has to remain radically opposed to the modern ideas of autonomy and emancipation. It is not about liberation within the social but from the social – ‘the social, normativity or subjectivity (all three is the same)’ (496) –: ‘It is not liberation of but from subjectivity, praxis and society.’ (526) That’s the way it is.
So does Menke finally return to a surrealist understanding of liberation? But wasn’t it renounced as a mere repetition of the spectacular fascination produced by modern secular societies? What exactly is ‘mystic nihilism’ and how does it in any way do justice both to the experience of economic and religious liberation? Why even bother at all and just stick to the ‘good old’ ideas of autonomy and emancipation? And, to put it in more political terms, how does Menke’s ‘theory of liberation’, which appears more as a ‘theory of fascination’, avoid the danger of fascism that it itself highlights?
Even the very starting point of Menke’s study appears to be an unfounded demagogical jumble of some big slices of Heidegger, a portion of classical Frankfurt School, strongly flavored with Foucault, Derrida and a pinch of fashionable postcolonialism. It is hardly convincing. Why not start with millennia of collective and individual struggle for emancipation and autonomy. For the ‘fascinated’ observer, this is only a deep misunderstanding which has borne no fruits at all and which only cries for collective repentance. And why is liberation, understood in the usual sense, even a ‘Western’ conception? Why is Menke’s idea of liberation even so strictly opposed to this allegedly ‘Western’, even ‘Greek’, idea? Has ‘fascination’ not always been an essential part of the ‘Western’ tradition itself, be it in Greek and Roman religion and art, in Christianity and, as Menke himself proclaims, in modern individualism, which has always contained a both romantic and ethical element and is presented by Menke in the form of a mere caricature, as if Charles Taylor never published Sources of the Self?
In 1939, no other than Hermann Göring warned Hitler in the face of the British declaration of war that ‘we should stop going all-in [das Vabanque-Spiel lassen]’ now. The Führer himself responded: ‘I have played all-in [Vabanque] my entire life.’ Couldn’t this be interpreted as precisely the attitude of a ‘“terrifying Yes” to catastrophe’ Menke calls for? Fascism could even be defined as the systematic, radical and pure politization of fascination – not so much as a fascinated restauration of custom but the radical, decisive break with custom, a collective unleashing of ‘death drive’ (548), the pure negativity that Menke defines as the ‘true – truly infinite, because infinitely negative – nature of Man [Mensch]’ (549). Is the very religion of fascism not also a satanic ‘mystic nihilism’ that Menke desperately seeks to find within the Jewish tradition?
Shortly after coming to power, Goebbels famously stated that now the year 1789 will be erased from the history books. This declaration was accompanied by similar declarations from various other German (pseudo)intellectuals who sometimes admired the French Revolution for the vitality it expressed, but hated its conception of liberation. Nowadays, liberal freedom is threatened once more by all kinds of fascinated religious and political fundamentalisms – not least by Islamists following a religion whose very name means submission (cf. 346) and may even serve as a better example of ‘religious liberation’ (in Menke’s sense) than the Bible – and also by the fascinating forces of capitalist economy that Menke himself acknowledges. Even if we were only faced with Menke’s alternative between liberal freedom and fascination, to claim that, in our current situation, our most pressing problem is not too much but too little ‘fascination’ seems to be an intellectual ‘all-in game’ at best. But, luckily, we are not trapped in this alternative. Ethical individualism, socialism, refined liberalism, enlightened religion, actual (that is, historical, not sensual) materialism – all these are viable alternatives that Menke all-too-quickly dismisses in the name of a self-declared nihilism. Surely, he and his ‘radical’ followers are not making their hands dirty by actually participating in the current struggle of liberty versus ‘fascination’, but are undoubtedly ‘enjoying’. Fortunately, we, the ‘unfascinated’ ones who stubbornly resist the ‘politics of education’ performed by this fascinated elite, have little time for this ‘ground-breaking’ reinterpretation of Being and Time.
In sum, this reviewer cannot recommend the book if not for the purpose of studying fashionable intellectual debates. At best it is a fascinating thought experiment, at worst a rather unadorned attempt at rethinking core ‘insights’ of the Conservative Revolution which has not much to do with critical theory. Or maybe it is just that: nihilism. In the end, the reader does not really know if he or she should join the climate movement, read Beckett, or convert to Islam – or maybe even start a drug business. The truth, however, lies in the simple fact that the usual understanding of liberation is not ‘Western’ but universal. It can be found in all cultures and the struggle for liberation takes places everywhere at any moment. It has borne tremendous fruits, but has also faced major obstacles and backlashes. It’s on us to choose our side: the intellectual and practical pursuit of freedom (in the only meaningful sense of the word), be it as liberals, leftists, Marxists, humanists, enlightened followers of any religion, or the forces of darkness, of fascination, that is, irrational submission or defeatist affirmation of the abyss. Different from Menke’s ‘choice’, which can only have one authentic outcome, it’s an actual decision we have to make. That’s the way it is.
Reviewed by Paul Stephan