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CULTURE AND
TECHNOLOGY 3 |
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From Narcosis: Reality's Double/Doubling Reality
"To be sure, this charming and singular state in which all forces are in equilibrium, in which the imagination, however, marvelously powerful, does not draw the moral sense toward perilous adventure, in which an exquisite sensitivity is no longer tortured by afflicted nerves, the most common counselors of crime or despair- this marvelous state, I say, appears without harbinger. It arrives as unexpectedly as an apparition. This, too, is a type of haunting, but an intermittent one, from which, if we are wise, we may derive the certainty of a better existence and the hope of attaining it through the daily exercise of our will. This sharp mental activity, this intellectual and sensory enthusiasm, has always appeared to man to be the most perfect of blessings; that is why, thinking only of his immediate pleasure, he has heedlessly violated the laws of his constitution to find in physical sciences, in pharmaceuticals, in the harshest liquors, in the subtlest scents, in all places, and at all times, the means to flee his wretched dwelling, if only for a moment."- Charles Baudelaire
"To begin to solve the riddle of the ecstasy of trance, one ought to meditate on Ariadne's thread. What joy in the mere act of unrolling a ball of thread. And this joy is very deeply related to the joy of trance, as to that of creation. We go forward; but in so doing we not only discover the twists and turns of the cave, but also enjoy this pleasure of discovery against the background of the other, rhythmical bliss of unwinding the thread. The certainty of unrolling an artfully wound skein- is that not the joy of all productivity, at least in prose? And under hashish we are enraptured prose-beings in the highest power."- Walter Benjamin
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Part of the difficulty of this topic, narcosis, and trying to structure it, to order it, is that it resists a natural order, or, rather, it reveals how the natural order is, perhaps, always already an unnatural order, an artificial paradise- which, of course, begs the question of what is the artificial paradise in Baudelaire's text (Artificial Paradises), reality or the hallucination. Perhaps, instead, this is why one always has to speak of artificial paradises in the plural, of both reality and its double as being artificial constructs, but, already, we are far off the path. Suffice it to say that this topic resists an easy structure or mode of presentation. Such a topic almost necessitates a fragmentary, aphoristic approach.
First, one would need to consider narcotic images, both images of drinking and smoking during the nineteenth century, as well as the idea of the image as narcotic. In terms of the second half of the nineteenth century, the image of narcosis often appears within specific haunts, such as the café, the new sites/sights of entertainment, places for the spectator, of acrobats, singers, dancers, dizzying spectacles, and new electric lights.
Indeed, one can begin to link the spaces of entertainment to the spaces of transportation, the steam and smoke of the train station being tied to the smoke of the café, these transitory clouds of the modern housed within the new haunts of modernity. While the train station is a space of transit, of being transitory, of the transition from one place to another, it is also a space of being seen, of forming identity and informing on identity, a world of the day, the spectacle of the day.
The café, then, is a space of spectacle too, but, here, things are less clear than during the day in the city, although we shouldn't assume that the day brings any clarity within the modern city. Indeed, the day may provide the reasons for the desire to escape into the night, whatever that escape may be from. The new sites/sights of entertainment are spaces of the between, of the night, of the mingling of classes, of the mingling of identities. Here narcosis is about the entry into another world, another status of being, perhaps even a stasis of being, being static physically, although the influx of visual imagery is far from static, at rest, but also always only static, busy.
For some it may be about relief, about escaping the world of pain. For some, the pain may be physical, physical exhaustion. For some, it may be psychological, loneliness. For others, it may be societal pressures, and so on, although, of course, it is probably some combination of factors. Of course, not all escape is purely an escape from pain. For some, the escape is there for adventure, an escape from sheer boredom and a drive towards and for a new form of excitement, stimulation. All of these people meet in this space, forging and forming a culture built around narcosis. Within these manifestations of a culture of narcosis, there is an aspect of dealing with the alienation brought on by the industrial-technological complex.
The prevalence and theme of narcosis, however, goes far beyond the scenes of cafes, the scenes of drinking and smoking. We also get the scenes of poppy fields, which are far from innocent, which in their own right have a relation to narcosis, which we will deal with in a moment. In addition, the relation between narcosis and art grows as we venture beyond the nineteenth century and look to how this theme pervades art during the twentieth century: from Duchamp to Pollock's cigarette butts, from Rosenquist and Oldenberg to Warhol's film of Duchamp packing a pipe, from Gilbert and George drinking to Maria Ambromovic, and, of course, within film from the poppy fields of the Wizard of Oz to the films of David Lynch which throughout make connections not only to Oz, but to the culture of narcosis through cigarette smoking, fire, electricity, and the induction into a seductive, destructive dream-like state. The theme of narcosis also goes far beyond the realm of art, being an element in advertising, but for now I want to return to the relation to and with art.
Indeed, we could find any number of images of smoking and drinking in art, for, in a large dose, the history of humanity is, at one level, its relationship to narcosis, to the consumption of drugs. What then are we looking for, what are we working towards, why are we on this path, what vein of thought are we trying to hit?
One aspect would have to deal with the relation between narcosis and capitalism. On the one hand, the profitability of the drug trade, how narcosis helps form the basis for many of the growing industrial countries during the nineteenth century, from the British opium wars with China to the tobacco fields of the United States. Such an approach would require a thorough examination not only of the world economies based on drug traffic, but would, of course, also need to address the issue of what drugs are legal and which drugs are deemed illegal and look at the intimate, but often overlooked, relation between legal and illegal drug traffic. In addition, there is also a whole political dimension to this narkleptocracy.
Another aspect that is a bit closer to where we want to go is that of examining narcosis as a status and stasis of being between and, here, we find an intimate relationship between narcosis and art. Both the artist and the person in a state of narcosis are members of society who are not necessarily producing for capitalist society, or, if they are producing, they are not necessarily producing at the most efficient level for the smooth running of this system. This would be a topic that could be developed and related to the artist and drug user as being on the fringe of society, engaged in what is viewed by the center of society as a non-productive activity. Of course, part of the effect of narcosis and art is precisely to put into question what is the center and what is the fringe of society, what is rational and irrational behavior, to suspend all of the categories ordering everyday existence.
Yet, on another level, we must think of narcosis as a status between, of non-productivity and over productivity, too much stimulation, excess, an excess of stimulation and the stimulation of excess, as well as an excess of inwardness within the social realm, of a retreat from productive society. Yet, the artist produces and there is product involved in narcosis. Moreover, it isn't always the drug that one is addicted to, but the very structure and stricture of addiction to which being is drawn. However, we will further examine this later.
Part of what marks the paths of writing on narcosis, in a state of narcosis, as we see in Baudelaire, is that of being disconnected, of being outside, at the limit of the social order, of being between the social order as participant and as being outside this social order. The flaneur, who takes in the spectacle of the modern world while being outside this world, a mere observer, is only the first of Baudelaire's and the modern world's narcotic beings, getting high on the world, if not on drugs.
So if bridging is about connecting, having an impact on society, narcosis is about disconnection, of re-connecting, of diverting the wiring, of being wired, of dealing and dealing with, while observing the impact of society, of the state, while we are in another state, and the state of narcosis is one of diversion, of distractedness, to return to one of our Benjaminian themes, as well as one of our writers on drugs. We all suffer. The suffering is there before. We just find ways to make it shift, to make it move, moving in art, and that is where we want to shift to, to art, before we get lost in the web, although, the state of techno-narcosis is where we are heading, or, perhaps, where we are starting from, today, within our society.
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