Extracts from ‘THE LEGITIMISER’ by Graham
Macfarlane (1999)
Chapter two
Part One: Post-Ironic Advertising
The Teacher: One of the first recorded uses of
the word Post-ironic occurred in an article published in The Guardian on
the 13/8/97. It was used in relation to advertising, where the journalist
described a series of adverts they had seen in America for up-coming shows on
NBC as post-ironic. One such advert simply featured a plate of wobbling
jelly for about 15 seconds, followed at the end by a voice-over saying “If
you’ll watch this, then you’ll watch anything” and then proceeded to list that
night’s shows. Interestingly, a more
recent example as innocuous as this seems, something very, very profound is at
stake in invoking this term, even if it was used erroneously.
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The
Student: Isn’t it just ironic and therefore postmodern?
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The
Teacher: No.
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The
Student: So, is it post-ironic and therefore post-postmodern (whatever
that means)?
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The
Teacher: It's certainly a step forwards/backwards from pm.
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The
Student: WHY?
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The
Teacher: The issue of TRUTH.
Part Two – The Rules of The Legitimiser
The
Student: What is truth?
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The
Teacher: Many have asked such a question! However, for truth to have any
value for more than just ourselves, there needs to be some form of
legitimisation taking place, outside of ourselves, otherwise what you say is
truth and what I say it is, could be a constant bone of contention that is
never able to be resolved. In other words, there must be a Legitimiser of some
kind, an ultimate ‘stamper’, that yeah’s or neigh’s the truth in question. Here
are the rules:
Rule
1: A legitimiser can act only on that which is sought.
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Subjective------>objective
individual----------->the
legitimiser
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Rule
2: A legitimiser can only legitimise outside of the individual.
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However,
if you include the legitimiser within the system of language, you can't do the
above!
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The
student: So, the legitimiser must be separate and therefore outside of the
system?
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The
Teacher: Yes, but someone like Jean Baudriallard (author of ‘Simulacra and
Simulations’ and the philosopher whose ideas were borrowed for The
Matrix trilogy) would disagree--->there is no means of legitimisation,
there is no ultimate truth. Everything stands within the system of language and
meaning, including a legitimiser. Hence the conclusion that someone like JP
Lyotard, another famous Postmodern philosopher, draws: “Postmodernism is a
fundamental suspicion of all meta-narratives (grand truths)”. Doubt, then, according
to these men, is the condition of the age.
There
is no way out from here, holding this standpoint.
Part Three – The Signifier and The Signified
The
Teacher: This is the state of language and meaning today, according to Jacques
Derrida and Baudriallard, the two leading post-structuralists.
Language contains within it no guarantee of
truth/meaning.
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the
signifier-------------------->the signified
(thing that is signifying something) (what the
signifier signifies)
/ /
The
word what this word
means
The
two have now become separated, so that there is no association, no bond, no
link between WHAT IS SAID
the
signifier--> <--the signified
/ /
the truth what the truth
is--->THE LEGITIMISER?
If
you believe that there is no connection any longer between these two, i.e. that
they are random elements, one truth could be replaced by another in the
signified area and there'll still be no way of actually knowing which is the
right one. A simple example is the word “Gay”. It essentially has three
meanings and depending on what generation you come from, you will attach a
different connation to it. If you are, say, over 80, then the chances are
you’ll think this word means happy or glad, full of life. If you’re in your
mid-30’s and above you’d understand this meaning, but you would also know that
it has come to mean same-sex attraction. If, however, you’re in your
teen’s/twenties then you’ll b familiar with these meanings, but you may also use
the word as a way of describing something as naff/crap. Of course, I don’t mean
to be so rigid, and it’s likely that if you have kids you’ll hear them use the
word in the last way and pick up what they mean. But the point of shifting
‘signifieds’ is illustrated, I think.
This is because there is no ultimate legitimiser, no ultimate source of
legitimisation, since all words, including the word “Legitimiser”, are caught
up in the same vicious circle of needing to be legitimised by something outside
the system of language:
the
signifier-------->the signified
/ /
"Legitimiser"--------->The ultimate truth and source of all
truth (which presupposes, starts with the premise of, it's existence)
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The
student: But who says the Legitimiser exists?
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The
Teacher: Exactly! The Legitimiser does, but how do we know they exist by the
word "Legitimiser". Someone outside of the "Legitimiser"
must legitimise this word, must give this meaning. How do we know that the
signified IS the signified?--->words have become detached from their
meaning, because of the conclusion by the post-structuralists that they are
trapped in this vicious circle of language, if you deconstruct every truth.
This is essentially what Derrida is getting at when he says, "nothing
exists outside of the text".
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The
Student: So how does the Legitimiser escape this conundrum? If I follow you,
you’re saying that in this case the Legitimiser can't say that what is
signified is in fact signified, because it is the one who is in question.
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The
Teacher: That’s right. The question cannot answer the question, if you will.
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The
Student: So how does the Legitimiser solve this riddle?
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The
Teacher: I’ll come to that presently. All in good time.
Chapter three
Part one
The
Student: If there is no way out, what happens?
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The
Teacher: We go into Pandora's Box deeper and deeper.
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The
Student: How does this manifest itself in the world around us?
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The
Teacher: Through examples such as post-ironic advertising
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The
Student: How?
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The
Teacher: The truth becomes so flippant, so up for grabs, and so substitutional,
that anything can be put in its name and called truth. EVEN A LIE.
And
you can admit the lie and still get away with it, because WE
Chapter six
Part one:
A question of Faith
And
thus we come to the crux of the matter: Faith
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The
Student: Faith in what?
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The
Teacher: Faith in our belief systems that we have been forced to create for
ourselves.
At
the end of the day, if you say that there can be no legitimiser, you are
putting your faith in this supposition, because you can never know
either way. Reason has its limit. Postmodernism has shown once again this to be
the case, but in a way in which I think the point is proven beyond argument.
Existentialism also showed this in the fact that none of the existentialists,
with the exception of Kierkegaarde, could ultimately transcend nihilism, though
Nietzsche, in particular, tried very hard. With existentialism, the
pointlessness of the exercise is admitted and yet there is still a belief that
one must attempt to overcome the problem of existence, to avoid ‘bad faith’ in
JP Sartre’s terms, through a call to action. That is, we must try and make
sense of the dilemma even though, in essence, we are doomed to fail (because of
the human condition we find ourselves in). If one reads Sartre, this is the
ultimate conclusion one arrives at, for me, at least.
With
existentialism, the philosophical argument moved from a switch from speculative
philosophy, which dealt in the area of pure reason/thought, to a philosophy
rooted in personal experience.
With
postmodernism, the area of combat is language itself; the language used, of
course, by philosophers as with all other humans. The nihilism is identified in
that reason is shown to have its limits in language. Language is
self-defeating. That is the conclusion of the post-structuralists. Therefore,
there are flaws in every argument (deconstruction) and an inability of man to
know anything is ultimately true (a suspicion of all grand/objective truths);
not because of man's condition (as in Sartre’s theory of the en-soi and
pour-soi and the inability of us to know anything in its entirety), but because
of language. And this is a more fundamental dilemma then anything else. I would
proffer that it actually leaves us in a more nihilist position than at any
time. As I have argued already, we find ourselves locked inside a prison,
having thrown away the key that unlocks the door. Nihilism * n+1.
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So
reason has its limits, as Kierkegaarde first identified(1). It leaves us still
facing the fundamental problem of how do I know that I know that I know
something IS? And the consequence of this fundamental problem is that how do I
know that I know that I know there is a legitimiser? The very same legitimiser
who is the only thing that can save me from this conundrum and unlock the door
to the prison I am in. I AM IN AN IMPOSSIBLE POSITION OF NOT BEING
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But
of course, we don't live like this. We live under the faith that what we
know IS; what we believe (our worldview) is valid (and therefore contains a
truth) and what we do (that is, what decisions we make based on our worldview)
has some kind of meaning and content.
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But
I have just shown how this stands in direct contradiction to the way it really
is. Reason, then, has its limits for answering any of the above questions. It
cannot answer them; philosophy has shown this. Yet, very often, we live as
though this were not true.
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Q:
How have we done this?
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A:
By transcending reason and moving to the level of faith.
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Q:
Faith in what?
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A:
Faith in the fact that what we know knows IS. Faith in the fact that what we believe
is valid. Faith in the fact that the decisions we make have meaning and content
to them.
We
cannot ever know all these can be so, but we believe that they are, by having faith
in the knowledge that they are and hope in being proved right.
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Faith
is being sure of what is hoped for and certain in things unseen.
(1) “The end of reason is the beginning of faith”, Fear and
Trembling. This is why Kierkegaarde has often been described as the Father
of Existentialism. Namely, because he first identified our inability to know
our essence, who we are, our purpose for existence, using reason alone. He
discovered the limits of reason, something that Renaissance thinkers, for
example, thought was impossible. In so doing, he demonstrated the absolute
necessity for us to take a “leap of faith”, a phrase he first coined. For
Kierkegaarde, this was a faith in God, but it was first and foremost a call to
action, something that both Sartre and Nietzsche equally recognised was
essential in order to attempt to define who we are and transcend our
predicament.
Chapter seven - Nihilism
Truth!!
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The
Teacher: So let's now return to post-ironic advertising and that wobbly
jelly to see where we stand today. In a nutshell, then, it’s saying: our
product’s bad for you, you know it, we know it, but consume it anyway (cos' you
know you want to!)
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In
other words: you were right to doubt us
when we said it was good for you (Nb. with the wobbly jelly, no attempt has
been made to say how wonderful the programmes on that night are). We know you
know it's not (it’s just a pile of wobbly jelly). Therefore, we're not lying to
you anymore, we're telling you the truth that you've always known i.e. telly is
essentially bad for you and turns you into a mindless moron, who’ll sit there
and watch wobbling jelly on a plate all day, as a general rule. It is telling
it as it is, to some degree, and yet if it was really being honest and telling
us the truth, the advert would say: so don't watch TV, go and do something
worthwhile. Obviously, this is something that they'd never do; therefore, it's
very much on the producers terms - our product is shit and bad for you, but now
we both admit to knowing this (again an acknowledgement of the truth), you
still like watching it, (don't you) so do it then.
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The
Pupil: It’s become very cynical.
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The
Teacher: Yes. It is cynical in the way it has such disrespect and disregard for
the content of the word truth. Here the truth has gone from television
is good for you and our product is good, to the truth (the real truth) that in
fact, television is bad for you and the product is consequently bad. It's the
flipside of the coin. Both definitions can act as the signified without the
signifier (the word truth) having to change. But in doing so, the gap between
the signifier and the signified widens another notch and becomes more
unbridgeable. When the signified can be changed like this for the same
signifier, the credibility of what is signified is irredeemably destroyed
through a process of mistrust. When people see the flippancy with which
advertisers (and here we can substitute Politicians and get the same effect, I
feel) use the word truth (through the changing definition of the signified)
they begin to mistrust them, rightly believing that if they can change the
definitions so flippantly then they are not to be believed at all. With this
type of "post-ironic advertising" the irony is that by telling the
truth the advertisers are in effect actually destroying the credibility of the
word (what it signifies). They are in effect proving its emptiness. IT IS THE
NEGATION OF THE TRUTH.
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They
are actually telling the whole truth of their intentions. They are hiding
nothing. They are candid about their product – it’s shit, yet they are equally
as candid about their intentions as the producer i.e. we still want you to buy
our product. So what we have here is a return to a modern message i.e. a truth,
an absolute statement, a narrative. This, then, is a return to an important
aspect of modernism. (See footnote 1)
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In
a sense, then, the journalist is right to use the term post-ironic; there is no
saying one thing and meaning another, in the entire context of the sentence.
What they say and what they mean are the same.
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The
student: But does this then imply that we live in modern age again?
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The
Teacher: I would argue it shows just how much we don't. It demonstrates this by
dismantling once again (if there was anything to dismantle in the first place!)
the whole credibility and therefore LEGITIMISATION of the signified, to the
extent where it is now no longer possible to describe the signified as
legitimate (legitimised - known to be the immovable, immanement fact, way it
is, truth).
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However,
the term "post" is significant and is an important clue as to where
we are now heading, philosophically.
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We
have a modern message, with no tricks of postmodernism, speaking to a
supposedly postmodern age (an age that doubts truth). As a result, the only
truth we can take is the harshest, most candid, most revealing, most honest
kind; which sounds great until we realise that by doing exactly this, the
advertisers actually demonstrate that we were right to doubt them in the first
place.
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The
optimism, therefore, has completely gone from the modern message. Where
previously in the modern age there was a hope, a belief, if you will, that
there must be a universal meaning that makes sense of everything (see footnote
2), we now have a situation where the very means of appropriating that
universal meaning (finding the ultimate source of legitimisation, the
legitimiser) has been deconstructed and shown to be empty and content-less. I'm
referring here to the relationship between the signifier and the signified and
the widening of the gap between them, after the initial break that linguistics
first picked up on. The gap just keeps getting wider, to the extent where it is
fair to say we have reached the place where truth is no longer possible.
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The
Student: Yeah, but you’ve just said that the advertisers in post-ironic
advertising are doing exactly this i.e. telling the truth. What's going on?
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The
Teacher: The truth is being told and yet, by this very act, it condemns itself
to be destroyed as a signified with any significancy, or a legitimate with any
legitimacy. The truth has negated itself.
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The
student: So is this postmodernism, a fundamental suspicion of all truths?
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The
Teacher: Today the suspicion has become more of a belief. In some quarters,
there is a belief that in terms of the universal, there is no such thing. In
other words, there is no such thing as THE truth; it is impossibility, given
where we are at and what we have come to think of the world (or, more
accurately, where philosophy has brought us to - the end of reason). This is
Baudriallard's position and it is an absolute statement in itself and therefore
arguably not postmodern anymore at all. It's not a suspicion, it's a belief: a
firm position held to be true by the subject. Baudriallard is sometimes called
a radical postmodernist. However, I would argue that if we're now talking in
terms of a fundamental belief that all meta-narratives are false (by very
definition of being meta-narratives, because meta-narratives are proven to be
no longer possible), then this is not postmodernism, it's post-postmodernism.
This is a rather cumbersome term for explaining the philosophical position of
mankind as we enter the year 2000. In essence, it is modern nihilism.
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The
student: Is this any different, then, from Nietzsche or Sartre?
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The
Teacher: Yes, because Nietzsche was on a quest, the Nietzschean quest: "to
become what one is". Sartre expressed it in terms of a quest to unify the
subject and the object (en-soi and pour-soi). The end was the same:
self-authentication, though each in his own way, in my opinion, failed to
fulfil and complete their aims. (See footnote 3)
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But
what we have now is different from this, even though it is modern in the sense
that this is an absolute position to take and there is a belief in an absolute
meta-narrative, one that is universal.
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The
student: IT IS A
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The
Teacher: (laughing) Well, Nihilism has been perfected, made complete. It is the
self-realisation of the spirit, in a Hegelian sense; the perfection of the
spirit. It is the spirit of our times and the perfection of the spirit. There
is no place from here for us, whilst we stay in the realm of the material
world. The end of history (the victory of the West and the spread of free
market economies underpinned by a liberal democracy, according to Fukayama),
the end of philosophy (Heidegger and Derrida argue this is the same as the end
of metaphysics, I would argue the end of philosophy is the end of reason and,
by extension, the end of materialism), the end is Nihilism; objective
truths are destroyed, the very things we require to authenticate and legitimise
subjective truths. Consequently, legitimisation is impossible. Not only this,
but the means of appropriating objective truths is also destroyed; the very act
of going on a quest to find the legitimiser, the ultimate source of
legitimisation is declared redundant because of a supposition in the
impossibility of such a task. This all adds up to the belief that life is
essentially meaningless, even though many of us don’t necessarily live like
this. As I explained before, I think this is merely because most of us are not
aware of where our own logic leads. It leads us to this position: the essential
meaningless of everything; which is exactly why so few of us will articulate
this or except it, because it contradicts our inherent desire built into the
human condition: TO HAVE MEANING IN OUR LIVES, TO HAVE MEANING TO OUR LIVES.
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So,
I am saying this is the position where philosophy has led us. It has led us to
the end of nihilism.
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The
Student: Is this the prevailing worldview?
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The
Teacher: I'm not sure, but it's certainly getting that way. Perhaps you could
argue in art, culture, and in terms of a worldview, we're still postmodern
(though there are one or two examples that demonstrate a progression
(regression) from this, such as South Park and post-ironic advertising), whilst
in terms of philosophy, we have reached the end of nihilism. Philosophy has
reached its self-authentication in nihilism. This is the next step on from
postmodernism.
1. Certain adverts were doing this anyway.
Some were merely using the appropriate means of communication for the purpose
in hand i.e. if the target audience has a postmodern worldview then speak to
this worldview, not a modern one. And of course, certain producers have no
choice now but to resort to this type of advertising, because there is no real
difference between many products (in fact, there is only differance
between them; Derrida's differance).
2. Even though in existentialism, the last
real modern philosophy, this hope is shown to be not necessarily any more than
this, i.e. an impossibility according to reason, but nevertheless something
that must be pursued despite the fact that the outcome doesn't in itself solve
anything. Rather, as Nietzsche pointed out, there is a constant dilemma to be
confronted and transcended every waking minute; life being an eternal
cycle/series of the same dilemma, namely the need for authentication
(legitimisation).
3. Nietzsche has often been called a nihilist,
in the sense that he was never able to ultimately escape from the accusation
that reading his philosophy, you could infer life was
essentially meaningless for him. The issue is in doubt.
Nietzsche wanted to transcend nihilism and Thus
Spoke Zarathustra is an attempt to do this. The question, I think, is how
successful did he pull this off?