Politics and Power
When Charles Bukowski was asked ‘Why don’t you ever write about politics and world affairs?’ his response was; ‘What for? Like, what’s new? --- everybody knows the bacon is burning’.
When we talk of politics and power, this is not in reference to physical power (energy transference), it is in reference to the power of influence. We have to assume that if we are considering the objects of both power and politics we must initially assume that they are one and the same; showing a figurative, and symbolic likeness. Through this mirror-like naming of things we do away with the real; it is the plague of the logically, visual-biased mind, as outlined by McLuhan, that leaves us with concepts minus percepts.
Post-modern philosophers believed that power developed from a decentralised point. As such, does power really exist or is it a simulacra? In Simulacra, that of the naming of things, assigns it a sign value, but Baudrillard stated that a mirrored sign cannot hold value. The mirroring of the rhetorical sign, through mass-media, has transferred our attention away from the signs of power and politics and therefore these signs have no link towards the ground or its centralisation. Therefore, what are power and politics but the appearance of capital in the form of desire and demand; the end of the obliged sign where there is no monopoly but only duopoly?
It could be argued that power and politics do not just exist in centralised signs such as the House of Commons, The White House, the politician, the bank etc, but in all situations of subjective analyses. Chomsky and Baudrillard would argue that this takes form in private duopolistic media as transference. In subjective analysis both the signifier and the signified lose their connection to the ground when they are reproduced and duplicated. A monopoly can be mirrored but a duopoly is more problematic, and may not be possible.
Who really knows what power is (in the political sense), do we fall back to Heidegger? He stated that power is held in standing-reserve. If so, who or what possesses the greatest standing- reserve of duplicating methodology; that which brings-forth a sign incarnated in apathy. This is, in essence, political power; the reproduction of the mundane, the comfort of the known. And who doesn’t like crispy bacon?
Here, we return to Bukowski. If power and politics are ‘the bacon’, as he refers to it, then how does it burn? Does it burn in clouds of atomic smoke or diatribes that facilitate standing-reserve as force without action. How can the concept of power and politics be tackled if we cannot first locate its source, describe where it came from, or how it exists. We could adopt a more structuralist approach, one that observes power and politics as being facilitated through capital, influence and closed association. As Marx stated ‘Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.’ However, the sign of utility has been duplicated and regressed into the form of fashion, the sign value par excellence, beyond the point of retrieving utility as value.
Merton said that media dialogue leads to nothing but a form of narcotising dysfunction; the replacement of knowledge for action. Knowledge is not action yet we are left with a conundrum in the taking of action; where does power lie? Is it centralised or decentralised? Can it be challenged, and if so how? Should we challenge it and what would be the purpose in doing so? We know that the bacon is burning but as we discuss the how’s and why’s of the situation, nothing changes. Therefore we, as Bukowski did, return to his answer: ‘What for? Like, what new?’
This attitude is a reaction to the counter-productivity of action, the narcotising dysfunction within modern society. Therefore, if our actions have no worth, we may just as well, as Bukowski chose to, adopt an attitude of apathy. As such, who better to conclude this article than Bukowski himself:
“Now if you'll forgive me, dear readers, I'll get back to the whores and the horses and the booze, while there's time. if these contain death, then, to me, it seems far less offensive to be responsible for your own death than the other kind which is brought to you fringed with phrases of Freedom and Democracy and Humanity and/or any of all that Bullshit. first post, 12:30. first drink, now. and the whores will always be around. Clara, Penny, Alice, Jo- eeny, meeney, miney, mo”
by Mark Dawson
