by
Massimo Passamani
Yes, I
know, we are all against axioms, guarantees, certainties.
But can
we really live without sharing our being against—without depending upon this
sharing?
The
search for identity is not always oriented toward the mass, toward the great
crowds of followers. Even the small group can become our safe space. What’s
more, the very refusal of every group and of any form of membership can
construct its own arrogant, solitary radicality through the play of recognition.
My
stubborn solitude is fed by what it opposes; it even—or maybe, above all—feeds
on criticisms.
To appear
to be against someone or something that seems to assume the features of
authority—a charismatic person, a common truth—is not always an act of revolt.
Its origins could be, for example, the desire to receive part of the light of
that which one challenges by taking the role of challenger. As if saying: I beg
you to notice that I have no leaders.
I believe
that the reality of not being esteemed (which is to say valued and
measured—even in the form of a certain hostility—by a group has greater
significance in the renunciation of revolt than repression. And there is no
resigned desistence that does not degenerate into resentment, quick to assemble
in new, spiteful herds.
Two or
three words, the same ones, repeated in some meeting, and there they are
joining the discussion that unfailingly ensues, in hope that other words—two or
three—will replace them.
All
right, it is as you say, I am going too far. But doesn’t seem to you that this
all consolidates the group and calcifies thought?
Starting
from myself, what is said to me always seems so imprecise and reassuring, that
hearing it continually repeated is frankly too much.
Deepening
relations of affinity would have to mean making difference emerge (otherwise,
on what do we base affinity?). And yet one doesn’t escape homogeneity (the fact
that some anarchist use this word in a positive sense makes my head spin) by
refusing conferences, membership cards and other blatantly formal fixations.
The
mechanisms—I hesitate to say rhythms, but perhaps they really are rhythms—, the
rhythms, then, of participation and compromise stress our lives well beyond
measure. Thinking for ourselves, as Lessing expressed it, is never the outcome.
What
would the desire to rebuild be if it never leads us to destruction? What would
it be if it anchored us to the role of destroyer?
Gottfried
Benn said that the one who loves the ruins also loves the statues. And with
regard to statues, Benn, it was understood.
Perhaps
it is anxiety about the future that transforms individuals into puppets of a
group. A life considering needs a solid basis. Obedience and calculation live
under the sign of an eternal tomorrow.
But
aren’t ideas—coagulants of language—giving us the awareness of time?
Thought
is born only when desire grows pale. Living the moment, the immediacy of
existence, completely, does one have no future, does one have no time—does one
have no ideas?
If all
values collapse (is it possible?), only “because it pleases me, that’s why”
remains.
So many acrobatics to discover what
children have always known.
The relation of mutuality—in no way a moral
good, in no way a duty—is maybe really a relationship between children.