Borges was introduced to the original terrorist somewhere between Sir Thomas Browne and Marcel Schwob. He had no face and a name like a resonance chamber: Herostratus, arsonist of the second Temple of Artemis at Ephesus; punished with Oblivion, redeemed by Spectacle.
His subsistence, despite his damnatio memoriae, means Spectacle is not beholden to its Debordian trappings ―commodity fetishism, the mass media, etc― but rooted in the fundamental problem of representation, and so of art-world-historical interest. And as mundane as the Herostratian claim to infamy may seem today, it also took stock of change in the epochal temperature. To cite Debord himself: “[t]he growth of knowledge about society, which includes the understanding of history as the heart of culture, [and] derives from itself an irreversible knowledge, is expressed by the destruction of God.” Herostratus’ arson ushered in a new and outré aesthetic limit-experience, and it is interesting that legend has it Alexander was born on that very night.
The terrorist organisation as we know it ―cast as the asymmetric shadow of the modern state on a cellular level― lays no claim to the Herostratuses of the world, who are after attributions more exclusive to the State ―or, indeed, God― than the means of production. To become as the State, or like God, is to seize and control the means of destruction, no matter how fleetingly. To “attack and dethrone God” is to pay off an entire world’s accursed share.
The society of the spectacle decorates the serial killer with the benefit of Method, but it is the Herostratian terrorist who has κόσμος. He is destruction as the herald of a new world order. He may look like Descartes or like Terence Stamp in Teorema, but for his act to be effective and to ―maybe― resonate within collective, folk, historic or genetic memory, it must be unrepeatable and unforgettable. Therein his nod to Spectacle: the Herostratian knows that, more so than beauty, terror has aura.
Two days ago, social media was ablaze with reports of “baby witches” hexing the Moon. The implications of their assault on not just Artemis, but the Thing-In-Itself, are occult and even philosophical, but they are not artistic, or historic, or spectacular. This attempted deicide was borne not from irreversible knowledge, but from a dearth of knowledge so profound as to be irreversible. As a charge on the Debordian House of Representatives, it didn’t even nick Representation.
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This “ Herostratuses of the world, who are after attributions more exclusive to the State ―or, indeed, God― than the means of production. To become as the State, or like God, is to seize and control the means of destruction, no matter how fleetingly. To “attack and dethrone God” is to pay off an
entire world’s accursed share.” Piece is way over my head because of:
1. Difficulty of reading/pronouncing Herostratuses and all those names
2. Unfamiliarity of the story(s)
3. The inside out logic which somehow seems so clear in it’s confusion.
– – BUT – –
It still impacts me as being important to unravel and attempt at understanding
Good job
Agreed, this was very difficult to read. Some introduction to the persons/events is dearly missed.
I think people like this don’t want to dethrone gods, after all, who would properly watch over their eternal punishment, certifying the fire they have stolen?
I’m reminded of Chesterton’s thief, who steals property so that he might more properly respect it.
To account for the desecration of the image of Thor is more likely an act for comics geeks than authorities in our time. The truly dethroned cannot make an example of you.
But even as these things verify the existing symbolic systems, they aren’t without threat; a religion that exists to authenticate blasphemy, or indeed any human structure preserved only to mark it’s continued deconstruction, becomes a lightning rod to transfer energy from the socially constructive to the individualist; does no-one think of the sacred cowherder?
It’s basically like a really bad cryptocurrency; to mark your individuality, you rely on proof of other people’s work.
“The constellations in the sky stood steeply on their heads, all the stars had made an about turn, but the moon, buried under the featherbed of clouds which were lit by its unseen presence, seemed still to have before her an endless journey and, absorbed in her intricate heavenly procedures, did not think of dawn.” – dang, HackerNews