Journal of American Studies of Turkey
14 (2001) : 31-33
“9/11”,
or Words of Nihilism
Mahmut Mutman
In
the immediate aftermath of so-called September 11, there was a particular
phrase we frequently heard on television. Every expert, every commentator,
every interviewee said the same thing: “from now on, everything will change;
nothing is going to be the same again.” What was meant by this was surely a
re-organization of political, administrative and security apparatuses against
the new terrorist danger. Despite the whole seriousness of the matter, this statement
made me smile whenever I heard it. If September 11 proved one thing, it must be
that it is simply impossible to prevent international terrorism by taking safer
and more advanced organizational, technical and legal measures against it. If
terrorism disappears one day, this will not happen because we will have fought
against it by our advanced security, administrative and technological
organization. If hijacking a plane and destroying two skyscrapers is really as
simple as acquiring a pilot diploma and carrying a knife, naturally tomorrow
someone else may have another surprise. The point is precisely that no system
can be so well organized not to have any weak points, failures or malfunctions.
But if this is often put forward as a justification for increasing security
measures, it is because those who do so are extremely reluctant to discuss, let
alone do something about, the fact that while North Americans and Europeans
pick an “ethnic” restaurant to go every evening, millions in Africa, Asia,
Middle East and Latin America simply starve. To remain silent in the face of
this unforgivable crime is to support it. But not hearing the grievances of people all over the world is also to
support such a crime of humanity in a most insidious way. The first
issue on the global agenda is therefore not more effective security measures
but a global redistribution system, that is, the issue of social justice and
freedom for the large working masses of the planet. I am not referring to good
will, charity or benevolence, but a global social reform. This is already the
end of my argument, and the rest is only a supplement.
My supplement is about a major constituent of our “modernity”,
the way we produce, understand and institutionalize what we call “technology”.
I think our strong belief in technology is, in the final instance, a belief in
the power of arms, but I am going to say something more general than this.
Technology here is a complicated concept, and by it, I do not mean simply
instruments or machines. I would like to define technology as a system of
sovereign subjectivity, which is to say not merely an instrument or means to an
end. The system of sovereign subjectivity depends on the assumption of full
control over nature and people by Man as sovereign subject. This desire to
control and master nature in its largest sense is also an imperial system, if
we remember that the Latin word “imperium” means “sovereign”. A primary
feature of the system of sovereign subjectivity is its “strategic” mode of
working, using this expression in Michel de Certeau’s sense: a calculation of
relations of force in and by which a sovereign subject isolates itself from an
environment which it then calls “other”.[1]
Since the system depends on a supposedly rational and scientific calculation of
forces, its failures can only be described as accidents. If we take the
rationale of the system in itself, indeed it would not be wrong to describe
September 11 as an accident. Obviously no such system can be immune to failures
or accidents, as every system is subjected to finitude, that is, being worn
out, aging, metal tiredness, death, failures of all kinds—just a simple knife,
just a missing Arab, etc. Our modern technological system of perfect
organization and control of everything cannot recognize finitude. The
technological system, i.e. the imperial system of sovereign subjectivity, which
is generally presented in terms of the “free market economy”, is a desire for
immortality. Is the terrorist response not mirroring and mimicking this modern
desire for immortality? Let us note that such an immensely lethal action, which
caused the deaths of thousands, was also made possible by the advanced
technology of airplanes. The fundamentalist terrorist’s metaphysical act of
sacrificing himself and others for “the great cause” is a desire to become
immortal too. This is why one has to be very careful not to confuse
fundamentalism with cultural, ethnic or religious identity or difference. If
Islam suggested at times that one could reach immortality by killing the infidel,
certainly it is not the only religion which made that suggestion, as it also
made many suggestions which are in exactly the opposite direction. Indeed one
of the other Abrahamic religions, Christianity, too, defended martyrdom as
powerfully as Islam, and Christian fundamentalism is pretty strong with
millions of followers in the U.S., whose current president, it is said, came to
power through electoral alliances with Christian fundamentalists. Given the
global social and economic circumstances as well as the historically changing
and fluctuating nature of religious discourse in all societies, it is highly
debatable whether it is a meaningful response to talk of the “crisis of Islam”
as the sole reason for what happened.[2]
“Increasing security measures” which is the only present
response, is no response to terrorism, but in turn, mirroring and mimicking the
terrorist gesture in a dangerous way. It is feeding into fundamentalism and
terrorism. Might this administrative-organizational mania be a desire for
terrorism, a desire for negativity, a desire for “weapons of mass
destruction”—a nihilism gone mad?[3]
The real and difficult response is to change the dire social, economic and
cultural conditions under which millions of people live in the Middle East and
elsewhere, and to create a global system of social redistribution,
justice and freedom. One could describe “increasing security measures and
establishing a security state” as a panic response. However, when making that
description, we should keep in mind that this panic response is a constitutive
element of a panic subjectivity whose fundamental aspect is a perverted
rationality based on fear of “nature” in its most general sense. This is a view
which sees nature in terms of scarcity rather than as infinite plurality of
forms of life and thought. If “9/11” is going to teach us something beyond a
merely defensive response, it must be a lesson about the way we see the planet
and the people who populate it.
de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday
Life. Trans.
Steven Rendall. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1988.
Lewis,
Bernard. The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror. New York:
Modern Library, 2003.
Nietzsche,
Friedrich. The Will to Power. Trans. Walter Kaufmann
& Richard Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books, 1968.
[1] Michel de Certeau: The Practice of
Everyday Life, Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988.
35-36.
[2]
This seems to be what Bernard Lewis does in his recent book, in which Islam’s
failures turn out to be the sole attention of learned and scholarly discourse.
See Bernard Lewis: The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror,
Modern Library, 2003.
[3] Friedrich Nietzsche: The Will to Power, tr. Walter Kaufmann & Richard Hollingdale, New York: Vintage Books, 1968. 12-13.