CULTURAL POLITICS VOLUME 3, ISSUE 3PP 357-380

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HENK OOSTERLING (1952) ISASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF

PHILOSOPHY OF DIFFERENCE,INTERCULTURAL PHILOSOPHY AND

AESTHETICS AT THE ERASMUSUNIVERSITEIT ROTTERDAM,

HE IS ALSO DIRECTOR OF THECENTRE FOR PHILOSOPHY ANDART. CHAIRMAN OF THE DUTCHAESTHETICS FEDERATION, AND

SECRETARY OF THE DUTCH-FLEMISH ASSOCIATION FOR

INTERCULTURAL PHILOSOPHY.HE HAS PUBLISHED EXTENSIVELY

ON FRENCH PHILOSOPHY.HIS BOOKS INCLUDE: DOOHSCH//W BEWOGEN. NAAR EEN

HYPERKRITIEK VAN DE XENOEOBEBEDE (KOK AGORA, 1996), BADICALE

MIDDELMATIGHEID (BOOM, 2000),MiD INTERKULTURAUTAT IM

DENKEN HEINZ KIMMERLES(VERLAG BAUTZ 2005). SEE:

HTTP:/A^WW,HENKOOSTERLING,NL,

INTEREST ANDEXCESS OF MODERNMAN'S RADICALMEDIOCRITY:RESCALINGSLOTERDIIK'SGRANDIOSEAESTHETICSTRATEGY

HENK OOSTERLING

ABSTRACT In my contribution,I adopt Sloterdijk's analysis ofglobalization as the megalomaneous or"hyperpolitical" installing oi a total workof art (Gesamtkunstwerk). I rephrase histhreefold {energetical, informational, andepistemological) "explicitation" of man'sradical immersion in his own media as"radical mediocrity" and argue that thishas become our first nature. But then, whatis the political potential of Sloterdijk's

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merger of aesthetics with politics as based on the Bataillan principleof excess rather than iacl^ and scarcity? Should we not differentiatebetween miserabiiist and affirmative critique? This distinction isail but self-evident, because every new mediological explicitationeventually reproduces scarcity through forgetfulness. It depends onthe critical difference between mediocrity and inter-esse, betweenplain comfortable life and self-reflective radical mediocrity. In thefinal analysis, the "psychological" surplus of generosity and thesubstance of creativity consist precisely of this self-reflective in-between. Therefore, any feasible critical reflection requires adownscaling of Sloterdijk's hyperpolitical understanding of being-inin terms of micropoiitical art practices. I will concentrate on onepossible answer to the critical questions that must be asked: whereinlies the possibility of resistance in Sloterdijk's recent analyses ofcapitalism?

KEYWORDS: philosophy, art, media critique, ecology, micropolitics,globalization

> Upon taking the stage at the Tate Gallery in December2005, Peter Sloterdijk began his lecture on the relationbetween art and politics, dealing with surrealism and

terror, with the following statement:

I like very much the pronunciation ofthe word "enormous." Itgives me a feeling for what 1 really am, that means, a personworking on monstrosity. No more, no less. Philosophy demandsthat all of us produce a new and convincing interpretationof that strange state of mind we call megalomania. In everygeneration megalomania has to be reinterpreted by its carriers.It's not a choice, megalomania is choosing you and you haveto cope with that as well as you can. The stress has to be putnot on the word "mania" but on the fact that it is a kind ofsuffering. The real term should be "megalopathia," to be patientof big questions. As soon as you can accept this existentialcondition you will feel a little bit better, but you are not healedof course.^

enyH There is no cure, only a taste for the enormity of our problems.oH 0. WORKING ON MONSTROSITYg We can imagine Sloterdijk almost physically performing a judgementE3 o f tas te by l i teral lyexaminingthe palatal, alveolar, and labial qualit ies

u ofthe English word "enormous," caressing the elongated, roundedsound represented in writing by "or." Wasn't it Gaston Bachelard who- in his phenomenology of the spherical - made the observation that"the value of perfection attributed to the sphere is entirely verbal"

RESCALING SLOTERDIJK'S GRANDIOSE AESTHETIC STRATEGY

(Bachelard 1994: 235)? In sliifting to the content ievel, Sioterdijkintroduces the focus of his judgement of taste: monstrosity. Both"enormous" and "monstrosity" are variations on one of ti^e crucialideas that iiaunt and inspire his spheroiogical discourse: dasUngeheuer. Aithough in earlier interviews he preferred the synonym"das gam GroSe," at the Tate it was once again "monstrosity."Adopting this concept from iVlartin Heidegger, who borrowed it fromGreek tragedy.^ Sioterdijk no longer reiates the monstrous to mythicaigods or a Christian God. It is a secuiarized version of Heidegger'sinSein: "to inhabit the monstrous" (dem Ungeheuren einwohnen)(Si: 643).^ For Sloterdijk, authentic philosophy cannot be but "ahermeneutics of the monstrous" (NG: 166; ST: 291).'' Conventionalthinking "means oniy the organized form of resistance against anyrefiection on the monstrous" (ST: 290).

in order to get a grip on Sloterdijk's "enormous" diagnosis of ourtime one has to take at least three giant steps. First, given the factthat the tensions between the locai and the giobai and accompanyingtechnology are articuiations of the monstrous, one has to familiarizeoneself with his analysis of contemporary globaiization. This processconsists of three stages. After a metaphysicai giobalization thatbegins with the pre-Socratic "giobai" mapping of the universe, aterrestrial giobaiization starts in 1492 with the "nautical ecstasies"of European powers which ied to the discovery of the differentcontinents. The iast sentence of Spharen i - "Where are we whenwe are in the monstrous?" (Si: 644) - resonates in the prefaceof part i l: giobaiization is understood as the geometrization ofthe unmeasurable. i.e. as "geometry in the monstrous" (Sii: 47):"Thinking the sphere means to be reaiized as a iocai function ofthe monstrous" (Sii: 25). In writing its genealogy. Sloterdijk impiicitiyrejects the unique character of current digitai globalization, it is justanother explication (Expiikation) of a miiiennia-iong process.

Rather than labeling this expiication as a progressive development,Sioterdijk qualifies it - with Giiies Deleuze's notion of "pii." or fold,in mind (Deleuze 1993) - as "explicitation."^' "Worid history" is adiscursive invention ofthe second phase. In the third phase man isbeyond history (WiK: 247). The monstrous becomes a quaiificationof a posthistorical world, i.e. a totality that allows neither full under-standing nor total comprehension, it is the enigmatic name for anetwork of immune systems, of cocoons, and capsules: after the ^bioiogicai motherwomb and the poiiticai nation state, man has erected Ean ecological Greenhouse with a foam-like texture, consisting of Ococoon-iike bubbies, glued together. To enhance Sloterdijk's imagery: ^the mother-child cocoon has been blown up to giobai proportions, gexpioded. and reconditioned as airy foam. E

Megaiomania suits Sioterdijk's state of mind. Mania, however. ucontains too much madness. Sioterdijk therefore corrects himseif byreplacing megaloman/a with megalopath/a not as much emphasizingthe aspect of suffering as the aspect of patience and endurance: to

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be patient of big questions.^ One specific Heideggerian overtone,prominently present in his eariier works - especially Eurotaoism(Sioterdijk [ET] [1989]) - but expelied from his iast project, resonates:monstrosity demands to be endured (Gelassenheit). It is too vastfor man. It is beyond aii discourses: "It is a work of art. but muchmore than a work of art: it is grand politics, but much more thangrand poiitics; it is technoiogy, but much more than technology..."(NG: 367).

The next step demands a tailoring of his concept ofthe enormousto relational proportions by downscaling these to an individuai level.In the concluding sentences of Im Weltinnenraum des Kapitals(2005) Sloterdijk proposes Aristotle's concept megalopsychia. Thissensibility - "an existentiai condition" - has to become the secondnature of citizens of posthistorical foam city, it sensitizes themto their current mode of existence: generosity and abundance.According to Nietzsche, Sloterdijk's other main inspiration,'' everysecond nature over time becomes first. Modern generosity - and,for that matter, modern tolerance - needs an update. Differentconcepts are proposed by Sloterdijk to actualize this notion. Themost frequently used is creativity. In the very last sentences of theSp^aren-plus project, Sloterdijk wonders why megalopsychia wouldnot be adequate, "just because [our contemporaries] nowadays saycreativity instead of magnanimity." "Creative peopie ... are thosewho prevent the whole from falling back into pernicious routine"(WiK: 415). I'll come back to these harmful routines. For the timebeing 1 restrict myself to registering that Sloterdijk puts his shirt onan aesthetic category: not autonomy but creativity.

One more step is needed. After having read 2,988 pages, onestarts to wonder what exactly the poiiticai relevance of Sloterdijk'striiogy-plus is. What does his "introduction to a general scienceof revolution" (SV: 64) mean? How are revolution and resistancearticulated within an aesthetic strategy? What kind of politics isleft when the outcome of spheroiogical diagnosis is the principleof abundance {0berfiuss)7 In the land of plenty, grilled chickens flyaround to be grabbed at will. Mere distribution of scarce resourcesis no longer needed.

I wiil start with the exploration of Sloterdijk's politico*aestheticstrategy in the strict sense: in his writing. After having analyzed itsrhetorical aspects I contextualize his claim of abundance in politicaleconomy, anthropology, media theory, and ontology. Then I return

p to aesthetics and politics. I specify in my own terms his media-j j theoretical underpinning of anthropology. In order to rephrase hisg critique of the indifference and mediocrity of the masses (Sloterdijk^ [VM] [2000]) in medioiogical terms. I need to make a distinctionu between the reactive and affirmative conditions of being-in-media.

The first condition reproduces lack and is quaiified by me as"radical mediocrity"; the latter is open, reflective, and iabeied as"Inter-esse."^ Hyperpoiitical megalopsychia becomes micropolitical

p

RESCALING SLOTERDIIK'S GRANDIOSE AESTHETIC STRATEGY

inter esse. In having rescaied and miniaturized megalopsychia tothese "mediological" proportions, Sioterdijk's politico-aestheticstrategy is better understood as the micropolitics of public space,i.e. art as public space.

1. ART AND POLITICS: GETTING BEYOND GRANDNARRATIVESSioterdijk's spherological project is monstrous indeed! More ad-equate a quaiification cannot be found for his trilogy-plus Spharen-project. The number of pages is enormous, the use of neologismsexcessive, the conceptual avalanche overwhelming, the historicallyembedded, methodoiogical iegitimization overpowering. The expiicitiypseudo-Hegelian overtones that give Sloterdijk's text coherence andconsistency are triggered by his desire to outdo Oswaid Spengier'sfaiied "morphoiogy of worid history" (SI: 78). For him. writing a historyof "the sphere as a form" means constructing a genealogy of thesphere insofar as it informed and formatted coiiective consciousnessand culture from the beginnings of Western civiiizatlon. Instead ofreproducing a historical approach based on negativity (Hegel) andresentment (Spengier). Sioterdijk adopts an affirmative approach(Nietzsche). He turned his back on reactive nihilism and its impiiedcynicism earlier in Critique of Cynicai Reason (1987; first published inGerman: 1983). This shift from cynicism to "kynicism" rehabilitatedthe hero of antiphiiosophy and cosmopolitism Diogenes of Synope.the philosopher in drag, who was presented by Nietzsche as themadman with his lantern wandering around asking the townsmenin the market whether they know the whereabouts of God. He hasnot been seen lately. Do they already know he is dead?

The death of God. first proclaimed by Hegel (1952: 523. 546),opened a new space in human consciousness: the sublime. Burkeprobiematized this affective tension. Kanttranscendentaiized it andin a postmodern turn it was "rephrased" by Jean-Franpois Lyotardas the ambiguous rationale of the avant-garde art that methodicaiiyshocks the bourgeoisie out of Its tastes. Lyotard's sublime stillresonates in Sioterdijk's notion of monstrosity when he mergesaesthetics with poiitics (Oosterling 1999).^ At the end of Spharen/// our current immune sphere - the Greenhouse or "Crystal Palace"- is described in terms of an artistic superinstaiiation in which public

space has gained a museum-like quality. This mega installation can ^be described as a total workof art, or Gesamtkunstwerk. "if this had Pnot been occupied by aesthetic ideology" (Slli: 811). p

Benjamin's analysis of Nazism as the poiiticai Gesamtkunstwerk jpar excellence^" probiematized the relation between art and poiitics gindeed. Therefore Sioterdijk's "delimiting the concept of art in order gto identify the system of society with the system of art" must surpass u"all previous interpretations of the concept of the total work of art..."(Sill: 813). Is "giobaiization" perhaps an option? Or McLuhan's"global village"? For Sioterdijk these are not suitable candidates."

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This "sphere of all spheres" only exists politico-economicaiiy as "aninclusive concept of markets" (WIK: 231), the coherence of whichis guaranteed by joint ventures.

Isn't this reason enough for Sloterdijk to draw the same conclusionas Lyotard did. i.e. that the grand narratives have come to an end?On the contrary. Sloterdijk makes an unexpected move: he wouldrather reproach the grand narratives for "not being big enough" (WIK:14). Understanding how Sioterdijk overtrumps the modern grandnarratives demands an understanding of his use of aesthetics atdifferent levels of his writing.

2. RHETORIC: FICTION, METAPHOR. HYPERBOLE. ESSAYSo how does Sioterdijk get beyond the grand narratives of modernenlightenment, i.e. of state-building, emancipation, and giobaiization?If these narratives are no longer viable, how can Sloterdijk stiii claimthe truth for his own grand narrative on spheres? Why, for instance,has he chosen the sphere as an all-encompassing image? is theform, i.e. the figure ofthe sphere - form and figure are synonyms(ST: 177) - not chosen arbitrarily and externally as an analytic tooiin his hermeneutics ofthe monstrous? It is instructive to consult hisphilosophical sources of inspiration: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault,and Deleuze.

a. fiction and metaphorsTruth, Nietzsche states in Posthumous Writings, is "a mobile armyof metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms, in short a sumof human relations that, poetically and rhetorically intensified,transferred, and adorned, after steady use occur to a people asfounded, canonical and obligatory: truths are illusions..." (1980:880, 881). Objectivity is at best the convergence of as manyperspectives as possible. Likewise our collective consciousness is"filled" or formatted by the spherical. Objectivity's fiction, overtime,gains a truth value. This canonized fiction cannot be unmaskedwithout using the very same fiction in the process of unveiling.Sloterdijk investigates this aporetic quality in his writing.

Heidegger's phenomenoiogicai notion of truth (a/ethe;a) - i.e.simultaneous disclosure and unconcealment of Being - is beyondthe configuration of the objective and subjective. We are always

^ already attuned to truth, always already in the mood. For Heidegger,^ Dasein is not a subject but a project. To Foucauit. truth was initiallyo a product of discursive formations, but it was eventually downscaiedjj to a truth game, a coiiective practice in which knowledge, power, andg subjectivity converge. That truth is an expression of a will to power isEJ acknowledged by both Foucault and Deleuze. When Nietzsche's viewo is linked to Deieuze and Guattari's definition of phiiosophy. Sloterdijk's

shift to creativity becomes self-evident: "Phiiosophy is the art offorming, inventing, and fabricating concepts" and "With its concepts,philosophy brings forth events" (Deieuze and Guattari 1994: resp. 2.

RESCAUNG SLOTERDIJK'S GRANDIOSE AESTHETIC STRATEGY

199; see aiso WIK: 14). Reflecting on the inconceivable monstrous.in short, demands the creation of new concepts in order to mobilize aprojected truth. This creation of truth is neither a subjective projectionnor pure description of a given reality, it is a revealing of what hasbeen concealed for a certain period in order to forge different politicalalliances and configure yet unseen epistemological coherencies.Truth is a projective practice.

So Sloterdijk's aesthetic intervention first and foremost takesplace at the ievel of his writing. He strategically applies stylisticfigures and uses rhetorical devices against the aforementionedphilosophical background. Is the sphere, for instance, a metaphor?Given the Deleuzean inspiration Sloterdijk felt white writing thethird volume of Spharen especially^^ we can compare his use of thesphere with Deleuze and Guattari's use ofthe notion ofthe machine.Machine is not a metaphor (see Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 36).Given the representational quality of the metaphor, this would stillpresuppose the very metaphysics that is under attack. And againit was Nietzsche, the thinker on the stage, who taught Sloterdijkthat "For the true poet, metaphor is not a rhetorical trope, but arepresentative image which really hovers in front of him in the piaceof an idea" (Nietzsche 2000:19). Sioterdijk's conceptual avalanchecovers this "necessary illusion" (ST: 188).

In a staged retrospective conversation at the end of part III - aconversation on this oxymoron between a historian, a theologian, anda literary critic, ail waiting for the philosopher to join i n - t he literarycritic counters the others' critique by stressing "the working ofthetext": "you neglect the information that is stored in the rhetoricalconstruction" (Sill: 87). The author, the literary critic goes on, hasused a superiativistand supremacist form of classical phiiosophicaireason. But this does not really solve the aporetic tension, it onlyshows that this is the breeding ground for truth.^^

b. critique of hyperbolic reason: hypocritical thinkingBeing a hermeneutic thinker, Sioterdijk's truth-finding means movingtoward an as yet undisclosed truth. What, then, is exactly the specificrhetorical device that is applied in order to overtrump the grandnarratives? In the introduction to Spharen i it appears to be thehyperbole. A "hyperbolic phenomenology"^'^ resonates in Sloterdijk'sspheroiogy. Poiiticai overtones can be heard: "by exaggerating the ^given divisions of society, [phiiosophy] makes us aware of the Bexclusions and offers them up for a retuning once more... Through Ophilosophical hyperbole the chance arises to revise definite options ^and to decide against exclusion" (SI: 13). "Exaggerating" helps us gto revalue the apparently given that is the result of the canonization 6of exclusive, dichotomous thinking. o

A decisive analysis of the relation between hyperbole and truthis not given in Spharen. For this, we have to turn to Nicht Gerettet.published during the finalization of the trilogy. In this phiiosophicai

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physiognomy of Heidegger, Sloterdijk dissects Adorno's andHeidegger's de(con)struction of metaphysics.^^ The relation betweenaesthetics and epistemoiogy is rephrased in terms of hyperbole andtruth. Citing the Roman rhetorician Quintilian, Sloterdijk points out thata hyperbole becomes a stylistic virtue once the topic has surpasseda natural measure (naturalem modum excessit. in Quintilian's words).The topic is the monstrous, an excessive worid. it is better for reasonto speak hyperbolically than to remain modestly in the backgroundin the search for truth. Quintiiian's words are paraphrased: "theJustification ofthe hyperbole is its appropriateness to excessiveness[Angemessenheit an das MaSlose]" {NG: 256).

Sloterdijk wants to break the nihilistic speli of negativity-and. aswe shai! see: lack and scarcity - by constructing a literary machineas a hyperbolic system that deconstructs the internalized hyperbolesof metaphysics that are taken for granted. When his interiocutor inDie Sonne und der Tod proposes the word "excess" (Obersteigerung),Sloterdijk reacts approvingiy: "I like the expression, because itreduces transcendence to exaggeration" (ST: 31). Metaphysics turnsout to be canonized rhetoric. That is why metaphysics can oniy becriticized inter-hyperbolically.Thegenitive "of" in "critique of hypert)olicreason" has to be understood as both objective and subjective: inthe final instance, in criticizing another hyperbole it exposes itselfas such. Surpassing Critical Theory, Sloterdijk undermines his owncritique. In a technical sense he has become hypocritical. We areall "collaborators." No one has an alibi (NG: 367).

c. essay: exemplary singularityThe reference to Quintilian for understanding hyperbole as anadequate rhetorical device for evoking and projecting truth, bearswitness to Sloterdijk's proximity to the French philosophy ofdifference.^^ Although he is hardly mentioned in Spharen, it wasLyotard who, in referring to another Roman first-century rhetorician -Longinus - prepared an understanding ofthe sublime for postmoderndiscourse. Both Quintilian and Longinus shifted the emphasis fromthe audience - where it lay in Aristoteles' Poetics - to the rhetorician;from reception to production. In criticizing the modern avatar ofthis production unit - the genius - Lyotard's attention shifts tothe work of art in its "working of the text." Not oniy does Lyotard

[3 subsequentiy connect the sublime to the Heideggerian event; he - asE Foucault had done before him with reference to Montaigne - comesO to the conclusion that the essay is the most adequate genre for[j postmodernity (Lyotard 1986).^'' For him, it is the genre that bestg expresses micronarratives. For Sloterdijk, however, the essay is a5 hypergenre. It hyperbolicaily establishes a singuiar truth.u The essay is radicaily democratic: it seeks its own rules. In

Kantian terms, it reflects on the exemplary position ofthe singular.In writing on singularity one is condemned to polyvocity (Sloterdijki993b: 62). That is why for Lyotard the essay Is a micropolitical

HESCALING SLOTEHDIJK'S GRANDIOSE AESTHETIC STRATEGY

tactic. Given its hyperbolic quaiity and Sloterdijk's characterization ofpolitics after modernity as hyperpolitics, the essay is a hyperpoliticalgenre. Hyperpolitics intervenes in a world that is understood "aslogic of functions, relations, liquefactions,... as a mode of thinkingon groundless complexity" (Sloterdijk 1993a: 76).

Rhetorical exaggeration eventually evokes in its audience thesubstantial topic ofthe spherology. As the outcome of a "revaluationof all values" (WIK: 349), abundance turns out to be the projectedtruth of Sloterdijk's spherology. Taking expression to be the in-discernible unity of form and matter, style and content, Sloterdijkaims at mobilizing the truth by evoking the content of his thesis- excess and abundance - in his grandiose attempt at a tale biggerthan any Grand Narrative.

3. POLITICAL ECONOMY: EXPENDITURE ORDISSIPATION?Now we understand how he is writing, the question remains as towhat the writing is about. In order to convey the idea that reality isruled by abundance, Sloterdijk has to reach beyond modern andpostmodern discourse. In spite of the empirical evidence of ourabundant wealth, even within postmodern discourse, abundanceis not so easily accepted as a basic trait of human behavior andthought. On the contrary, economic and political practices stillthrive on the opposite idea: scarcity. It is scarcity that legitimizesthe economists' contention that the efficient distnbution of scarceresources to everyone serves the common good. But the discourseof scarcity and lack has become so excessive that victim culture isflourishing. "Victimism" is a trend that is enhanced within the currentcompensation culture as the vibrant nucleus of a global risk society.Herein freedom is facilitated by security and insurance. Abundanceis everywhere, but it is ideologically neglected and even denied by aculture that makes money out of fearful anticipation and translatescomplaints into claims. Political culture - both the Left and the Right

- sustains and enhances this attitude. The former still interprets theworld in terms of oppression and exploitation; the latter laments theloss of values in terms of decadence.

a. affluent society and miserabilismThe scarcity option is declined by Sloterdijk as "miserabilistic." The wlaments of "miserophiles." their "bel canto miserabilism" (Sill: 690) Pthrives on an anthropology of lack. Its advocates are by no means onegligible: The respected Pierre Bourdieu is downgraded to an agent Sof the "miserabilistic Internationale" whose interests are looked «after by "poverty lawyers." Benjamin too is dismissed as "misere ^conservative" (Sill: 781). Our main problem in "the affluent society" uis our self-image, our self-definition, and our self-esteem. Revaluatingthe surplus requires "a theory of constitutive luxury" (Sill: 676),questioning the apparent primacy of scarcity. Is it an ontological.

HENK OOSTERUNG

ideological, or discursive illusion? Is it an integral part of our being,of our political economy, or just paradigmatic for a certain period?Even worse, is Sloterdijk's proposal to appreciate abundance overscarcity Utopian?

A genealogy of scarcity proves him to be right. Although he doesnot mention this book, Foucault's The Order of Things can be takenas a guideline. His archeology of human sciences reveals that theconcept "scarcity" came to the fore in eighteenth^entury discourse(Foucault 1970: 256). The systematic introduction of scarcity wasshaped between the classical and modern episteme by economistslike Say, Ricardo, and Smith. Deconstructing scarcity and advocatingabundance can therefore be understood hyperpolitlcally as a critiqueof economic discourse.

In the course of modernity substantial arguments for abundanceover scarcity have been made by others as well. In France this affirm-ative approach is part of a deep-seated tradition. In the 1920s thedebate was set in motion by Marcel Mauss. During his anthropologicalresearch on North-American tribes he became acquainted withthe potlatch: a periodic ritual in which the powerful dissipate theirwealth. By outdoing their rivals they not only reestablished theirpower, but they also renewed the economic cycle for another year.Mauss's anthropological research was philosophically adapted byGeorges Bataille, who passed the word to a generation of thinkersof differences, among whom were Kristeva, Lyotard, and Deleuze, butmore particularly Foucault and Derrida (see Derrida 1978).

Expenditure of wealth, however, is different from dissipation:"the mediocre dissipation [durchschnittliche Verschwendung] oftoday cannot be compared with the generous refutation of lack assuch" (ST: 334). Dissipation still functions within a discourse ofscarcity that favors recycling and asceticism as the main solutionsto our problems. Within this perspective, dissipation has a pejorativequality. It is still burdened by exactly those guilty and shamefulfeelings Schama describes in The Embarrassment of R/ches (1987).Bataille, however, develops an affirmative view on expenditure(depense). Once we shift our gaze to the process level, the instantgratification of overflowing enjoyment appears to be an affirmativefeature of dissipation. Spending time excessively not only annihilatesthe surplus of economic transactions - even the most necessary

=5 goods are destroyed, ecstacizing the participants of the ritual to theg point of selMoss or even annihilation. A Bataillan analysis of soccerO hooliganism is instructive.J All our addictions bear witness to the paradoxical fact thatg dissipation is collectively productive. The astonishing, though power-E3 invested, statement ofthe American president in his State of theu Union address in 2005 - "America is addicted to oil" - is only one

further miserabilistic confession that apparently fits the logic ofboth scarcity and autonomy, but in the final instance explains howexpenditure drives the global economy. Surrounded by abundance,

RESCALING SLOTERDIJK'S GRANDIOSE AESTHETIC STRATEGY

globally connected, leading comfortable lives, we realize that aparadigmatic ethico-economic shift is needed in order to share ourwealth. The "we," this will be evident, are the wealthy inhabitants ofthe five-storey-high Greenhouse (WIK: 333-48), the Crystal Palaceas a mega installation that has been slowly, but firmly, erected duringthe complex triple globalization.

Sioterdijk counters the uncomfortable aspect of our affluentsociety, triggered by guilt and resentment, by advocating "sourcesof alternative dissipation" (WIK: 362). Experience-based knowledgebeing transformed into free-floating information, and facts into data,Sloterdijk foresees a future where "all that is solid melts into air"as Marx wrote of modernization. Matter dissolves into immaterialflows. This is an inescapable conclusion of a genealogy of global-ization: after the second globalization, territory is no longer a safeharbor for human communities. The earth deterritorializes and reter-ritorializes In the air. Current extraterritorial globalization, driven byan urge to move forward (Auftneb), forces us to levitate our existence.Enlightenment as an overall explicitation cuts through the Cartesiandichotomy of mind and matter. In becoming less heavy, lighter, bothconsciousness and body are enlightened. Air conditioning takeson a very literal meaning. Coal and oil will be replaced by solarenergy.

b. revaluation of all values: a formal-ontological primacyof excessAlthough Bataille is not referred to in Spharen. statements like thefollowing do suggest that a modified Bataillan perspective is adopted:"Isn't it more true to say that life fundamentally is an overreaction,an excess, an orgy. Man is an overreactive animal par excellence.Making art means overreacting, thinking means overreacting,marrying means overreacting. Ail decisive human activities areexaggerations. Walking upright is already a hyperbole..." (ST: 32).Disproportionate excess {UnverhaltnismaSige) is the bottom line ofhuman life.

Given the pseudo-Hegelian overtones in Sloterdijk's texts, it isperhaps instructive to understand the excess in formal-ontologicalterms. In Hegel's Science of Logic the extreme or the measureless(das MaSlose) Is a transitional concept at the very end of the logicof Being where, after the negation of quality by quantity, both are J"sublated in measure. Once measure loses its qualitative guarantee £and becomes sheer quantity, it becomes a knotted, highly complex Onetwork of measure relations. Its dialectical dynamics finally dissolve Hinto excess as an upbeat to absolute indifference. In the first gmovement in the logic of Essence (Wesen) that follows the logic of hBeing, this absolute indifference, in trying to understand itself, has uto acknowledge that it is sheer appearance. In following dialecticalnegation and sublation, the overcoming of absolute indifferenceleads to the realization of the human condition - world spirit in its

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historical articulation - in terms ofthe reflective concepts of identity,difference, contradiction, and finally ground.

Once dialectics loses its universal authority, excess - as a "falseinfinity" of the logic of Being - is affirmed.^^ The hyperbole is arhetorical device that is applied to reconfigure the excess coherently.The hyperbolic text sensitizes its readers not to become indifferentto the truth. Sloterdijk's hermeneutics of the monstrous, aimingat a revaluation of all values, does not ignore indifference. Heaffirms this as the nihilistic excess of values in a "kynical" way inorder to overcome the postmodern dissolution of truth. Playing onBloch's "Principle of Hope" Sloterdijk hyperbolicaily proposes theprinciple of abundance as the still-concealed truth of modernity.Man can acknowledge this condition through his worldliness andby communicating its monstrosity hyperbolicaily.

In a revaluation of all values, excess becomes abundance, acondition discursively evoked by exaggeration: "The justification ofthe hyperbole is its appropriateness to excessiveness" (NG: 256).But why does this revaluation of values suddenly pop up? Althoughthe sublation of excess into indifference is understood in termsof nihilism, this nihilism does not imply, as is often proposed, theabsence of values. It is rather the result of a radical evaluation of anysovereignty that was once beyond evaluation: in the final instance,of God. It is the excess of values that can no longer be coped within a consistent and coherent way. This leads to a chaotic metastasisof values, as is for instance nowadays illustrated by the rules andregulations that govern public space. Metastasis also sheds lighton the debacle of multicultural society and the logic of the risksociety. The subject has to become indifferent in order to cope withthe excess of meaning and means.

4. RELATIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY: LACK AND TOO MUCH"We always already inhabit the dimension of excess" (ST: 337).Following Hegel, excess is, in formal ontological terms, a pre-supposition for reflecting identity. Sloterdijk redefines this formal-ontological transfer in his anthropology. In Die Verachtung derMassen "eroded individualism" has made indifference "the one andonly principle ofthe masses" (VM: 88). "Identity and indifferencehave to be understood as synonyms" (VM: 86) once all ontological

J5 differences - gods, saints, sages, and the talented - are negated.P Modern man's contemptuousness (Verachtung) is pacified in theO "differential indifference" that forms "the formal secret of thejj masses and of a culture that organizes a total middle" (VM: 87).^^« The latter can even become "totalitarian" (VM: 95).| j If hyperbole as a rhetorical device evokes truth, and if expend-u iture is the hidden "rationale" of economic life, what then are the

implications for an affirmative anthropology? Though Hegel wasthe first to proclaim the death of God In his grandiose effort tosecularize Christian negativity, it was Nietzsche who radically drew

RESCALING SLOTERDIIK'S GRANDIOSE AESTHETIC STRATEGY

its consequences: Man has to acknowledge being as first andforemost an affirmative will to life that legitimates itself via a willto truth as a will to power. Excess is an affirmation of these vitalforces: "The element of human beings is the too much [dasZuviel]"(SMI: 709).

This is. however, not man's "essence." Surplus is at best man'sfifth element, his "quint-essence." Given this quintessential excesswe need to revalue our present human condition, not by feeling guilty,but by acknowledging and practicing generosity and creativity. HenceSloterdijk's hyperbolic proposal of "a theory of a constitutive luxury."Most people have no problem acknowledging that modern life hasgradually become more comfortable. Over the last two centuriesan apparently infinite range of possibilities for applying scientificresearch to daily circumstances has raised the level of comfortexponentially. For wealthy cosmopolitans the struggle for life hasbeen reduced to a minimum. Once we cross the 10 percent povertythreshold, we enter the five floors of the Greenhouse (WIK: 334,335), populated by people who no longer sweat. They are stressedand fearful, but properly insured.

This comfortable situation has consequences for anthropology.Is man as an animal rationale - mind governing body, in spite ofevident shortcomings - still an option? For Nietzsche man was a"nicht-festgestellte Tier," an animal not fully realized. Nietzsche'sdefinition, when incorporated into Scheler's view on human behavioras "openness to the world," enabled Arnold Gehlen to qualify humanbeings as "Mangelwesen" (Sill: 699, literally a "being of lack"): inspite of all the luxury that surrounds him, man is a being whoseelement is a constitutive lack of the necessary means of subsistence.This, however, triggers institutional compensation: family, school,gang, army, church, nation, in the final instance - culture. Thesenormalizing, disciplinary institutions form immune systems, whereinlack is transformed into a productive force, as happened withasceticism based on resentment. Ascetics, enjoying excessivediscipline, transform the reactive element of lack affirmatively intoa value in itself.

Gehlen regards the lack of means (Mittellosigkeit) as an essentialtrait. In Spharen III. Schaume (Foams) all intellectual and rhetoricalforces are mobilized to free Nietzsche from Gehlen's "miserabilist"grip. Although every newborn lacks the means to survive and «therefore has to be protected and guided, the abundance of sensorial Pstimuli is unlimited. The senses, being a-specific, are overflowing pwith stimuli. Sloterdijk reverses Gehlen's thesis by focusing on Hrelations that are enabled by media and mediations. These even gconstitute relations as an openness, a creative force that channels gexcessive abundance: "what we call the open is the dimension oof wealth in its existential reflex" (Sill: 760), wealth being "theability to participate in an explicitation..." (SHI: 756). Given theanthropological premiseof plenty, during their lifetime individuals are

HENK OOSTERUNG

embedded in ever-changing immune systems to prevent them fromcollapsing under a constitutive abundance, called addiction.

Immune systems decline over time. They engender their ownaporias and become auto-immune. In an article^" on urban cultureSloterdijk explores an alternative lifestyle of expenditure. One of hiscritical remarks concerns the redefinition of freedom caused by theprimacy of mobility and the abundance of cheap energy. Automobilityis qualified as a Heideggerian "existential." In Eurotaoism totalmobilization is positioned as our "first" nature. In this "kineticanthropology" the car is "the technical double ofthe principally activetranscendental subject" (ET: 42). But automobility has produced itsown auto-immune disease: Total mobilization suffocates urban lifeand comes to a standstill in a thousand-mile-long traffic-jam. It isevident that an immune system will dissolve once man does notacknowledge and foster its auto-immune tendencies. But morethan these aporias, Sloterdijk emphasizes another, more relevantanthropological implication. In line with Deleuzean thought, immunesystems "reveal" the foundation of man's being as relationality.

In opening up to the world the child is always already beyond"itself." It is embedded in a bi-unity of mother-child, an extra-uterinesymbiosis that overrules lack. In orderto accentuate relationality overlack at the very end of Spharen /. Blasen (Bubbles), Lacan's theoryof desire is countered by Kristeva's primacy of the mother-daughterrelation (SI: 542). This symbiosis is an "ecstatic immanence" (SI:641).^^ The shift from a male-dominated, monomaniacal perspectiveto a female-oriented, open, one was already made in Eurotaoismus.There, Heidegger's implicit negation of life - "being-toward-death"- is overruled by Hannah Arendt's "natality": A coming-into-world{zur-Welt-kommen) (ET: 205) that includes both bi-unity and creativity.

Within Sloterdijk's general science of revolution, natality is thesecond radical. The first revolutionary radical was civil society aspart of modern nation-state building within the second, territorialglobalization. The third radical - Sloterdijk writes this in 1994 - is"a conversion of souls" prepared by philosophy (SV: 6 1 , 62). Thisat least echoes the idea that in order to change the world, collectiveconsciousness - Hegel's World Spirit - has to convert itself. InSpharen the perspective has slightly changed. Modifying Latour'squestion as to whether we have ever really been modern, Sloterdijk

g wonders whether we have ever been revolutionary (SMI: 87). The^ revolutionary impact is no longer presented as a reversal, but as aO radical unfolding, a making explicit, emphasizing the "making." Thel^ result of this explicitation is a comfortable life for the inhabitantsg of the Greenhouse, which is fully dependent upon technological,^ juridical, and insurance-based mediations.

5. ENLIGHTENMENT AS MEDIOLOGICAL EXPLICITATION"I see myself as a human being who functions amid technical mediaas a medium in the second degree, if this is a plausible proposition"

RESCAUNG SLOTERDIIK'S GRANDIOSE AESTHETIC STRATEGY

(ST: 15). If we want to understand the radical implications of atheory of constitutive luxury, we cannot neglect Sloterdijk's mediatheory, based on McLuhan's thesis that media are extensions of oursenses, organs, and limbs. Media theory underpins his anthropology.This "mediology" miniaturizes and literally ex-plains, i.e. extendsmegalopsychia - generosity and creativity - in man's use of hismedia. Cartesian res extensa is drawn beyond its opposition to rescogitans. Mediologically, both are reinvested in a relational condition.Sloterdijk's grandiose estimations of the revolutionary effects ofmediatization need a rescaling, because I think there is a blind spotin Sloterdijk's media theory. His hyperpolitical aesthetics must beinvested in micropoiitical art practices. In order to expose this blindspot, a systematic distinction is needed between a being-in-mediadriven by lack (radical mediocrity) and one that reflectively affirmsabundance, t will characterize this, emphasizing the interest ofthein-between and referring to the Heideggerian undertow in Sloterdijk'swork, as "inter-esse." Preliminary to this distinction is a furtherdifferentiation of the notion of Enlightenment.

a. Triple Enlightenment: "silent takeover" of the mind"Mediological enlightenment" (WIK: 261) not only enlightens themind; it also makes bodies less heavy and connects minds andbodies via interfaces in a more transparent way to and in theworld. I call this Triple Enlightenment. Next to the conventionalEnlightenment of our collective consciousness (1) - emancipationfrom our "selbstverschuldete Unmundigkeit" (self-inflicted immaturity)- enlightenment explicitates itself through scientific knowledge, theexplicitation of which in its turn is technology. Ever-acceleratingmeans of transportation literally "enlighten" our bodies (2) as domeans of telecommunication (3). Territorial distances are annihilated- a supernova right in front of our noses; intercontinental chatter- new virtual ones created - atomic universes; virtual public space. Inthis way speed of transportation and transparency of communicationenlighten body and sight. The three aspects of enlightenment arefully dependent upon each other. The last two have always beenpart of Enlightenment, but only in retrospect can we acknowledgetheir constitutive value.

But the steam engine, combustion engine, jet engine, television,pacemaker, computer, and Internet - to mention only the most obvious ^- have initially ruptured existing immune systems. Enlightenment Ehas this psychotraumatic price (NG: 341). Gradually, however, Othese mediations are internalized. Modern man's life becomes ^more comfortable. Once the immunity of the system is restored gor a new immune system installed, this comfort becomes part of Enormalization and subjectivation. Speeded up in capsular nodes u(cars, trains, planes), communicating via interfaces (computers,cellphones. GPS), extending their potentialities, human beings feelless heavy, i.e. freer.

HENK OOSTERLING

Modern life has undergone a "silent takeover": Technology hasconverted - explicitated - modern man's soul without his realizing It.As a result of this triple enlightenment, man and machine, mind andmatter have integrated. Machine is no longer a metaphor. Man hasbecomes "psycho-technological" and "techno-psychological"being.^^Media are incorporated to the point of becoming indispensable meansof subsistence. As a result, our moral categories are transformed. Domodern subjects still nurture the idea that they have an instrumentalrelation to "their" media? They can abandon them when they have nomore use-value. Nowadays freedom is synonymous with frictionlessimmersion in a media environment. Enforcing your own rules - beingauto-nomos - is transformed into a will to access and exposure.Heteronomy is no problem. The "lightness of being" is no longerunbearable.^^

b. Dasein is design: radical mediocrity as first natureIf relational anthropology is in need of "an ontology of prostheticrealities" (NG: 361), mediatization explains how our souls areconverted: by being-in-media. Being-in-the-world is now being-in-media. a medium being more than just an instrumental, kineticconnection between separate beings. The identity of the relatais constituted in and by the relation. Intention is articulated byits extensions, inner life by its prosthetic explicitation. Medicaltechnology replaces and transforms vital functions of both bodyand mind. Cars and cellphones do not simply facilitate social life;they actually constitute sociability. The proposed transformation ofAristotelian megalopsychia has to take into account the constitutiveworkings of mediological extensions or prostheses (NG; 361).

How does second nature become first (SMI: 809)? After the initial"illness" that always accompanies the introduction ofa new medium,end-users consume the comfort, the abundance of "their" media. Butonce this mediological abundance constitutes the end-user's milieuor immune system, the "incorporated" media wili become as invisibleas they are Indispensable. Proximity without distance roots both bodyand soul in media. In retrospect this mediological relationality alwayshas been an inextricable quality of man's condition. Every mediumbecomes the message, i.e. man's milieu. The medium becomes anexperience in itself. It produces yet unknown forms of entertainment

g and even lifestyles (see Pine II and Gilmore 1999). It Is no longerE a means to an end. That is why the idea of quitting automobilityg and interactivity feels like being crippled, blinded, or deafened. It•̂ Is as if we are invited to cut off a healthy leg and pierce a properlyg functioning eye or ear.H Nowadays Dasein seems reduced to a rooted or "radical" medi-u ocrity (see Oosterling 2004b, 2005a). The mediocrity of the masses

expressing contemptuousness, so severely criticized by Sloterdijk,is an indication of a constitutive lack. Given their indifference,individuals nowadays no longer realize that their "first" nature

RESCALING SLOTERDIIK'S GRANDIOSE AESTHETIC STRATEGY

was initially second nature. In medial performance, memory ofthis "first" nature is absorbed in the actual awareness triggeredby the second, "In comfort one does not ask where it comes fromwhen It has become a habit" {Sill: 403). Unreflective being-in-mediatakes its users beyond history. It is at this crucial point that amedium becomes "a harmful routine." Once the abundance of newmedioiogical conditions is internalized, needs that were previouslynonexistent are ontologized. They become primary needs. Autonomyhas become automobility, freedom frictionless access, Dasein design.As a result the unprecedented possibilities - or better, vJrtualities- of an internalized extension reproduce lack on another level.

Every new medioiogical explicitation eventually reproduces scarc-ity through forgetfulness. In order to add a normative component tobeing-in-media, I make a distinction between a miserabilist and anaffirmative medioiogical condition. As a result of forgetfulness theformer prolongs the illusion of autonomy based on lack. Only thesecond, which advocates openness, enhances the reflectivity whichSloterdijk's museological attitude presupposes (Sill: 810). In part I ofSpharen, for "living in each other in ecstatic immanence" it sufficesto be "a male or female modern mass-media being" (SI: 640). Butwhen he notices that "the mediocre, medial, and vulgar effaced thehonzon" (SI: 642), it is evident that for Dasein to be "a passion inthe face of the monstrous" (NG: 223) reflectivity has to be part ofour "medio-crity." This is acknowledged at the end of part III: "Actuallyreflectivity and 'being spoilt' (Verwdhnung) are inextncably linked."Once "imaginations concerning lack have become second nature,it is hard to see how they can perform this change of perspectiveson their own" (Sill: 809).

c. Ontology of the in-between: abundance as inter-esseThe lightness of being-in-media does not "naturally" make theexperience of abundance reflective. As long as the in-betweennessof radical mediocrity does not reflect on itself, comfortable lifecan easily turn into an experience of lack. For Sloterdijk, mediocrepeople are part of the They (das Man), Heidegger's qualificationof Inauthentic existence (SI: 643). Notwithstanding the collectiveproductivity of addictions, the current level of addiction to all kindsof media - even oil - bears witness to the fact that autonomy is nolonger adequate as a category with which to understand ourselves ^in terms other than indifference. Autonomy being sheer illusion - a ^Nietzschean fiction - for Sloterdijk, authenticity obviously is still an Ooption. What is needed is a reflective attitude as an "existential" in ^which mediocrity is experienced in its affluent generosity. As Hegel gargues: reflectivity sublates indifference. E

Ontologically, radical mediocrity is a condition of being-in-between. uIn foam city we, glued foam bubbles, share the in-between.^'' Anaffirmative approach acknowledges that Homo sapiens is an "inter-esse" (Zw/schenwesen). Although Sloterdijk criticizes "our efforts

HENK OOSTERLING

to make ourselves interesting," which means to "make-oneself-betterthan-the-others" (VM: 87), with reference to Heidegger'sThey, an authentic human condition is at hand. Heidegger makes adistinction between an inauthentic condition of the Interesting asshallow entertainment and a being-in-between (Zw/sc/ien-se/n) as"Inter-esse": "Interest, inter-esse, means to be among and in themidst of things, or to be at the center of a thing and to stay withit. But today's interest accepts as valid only what is interesting."^^"Inter-esse" is the "cement" (Kit) of relationality or Being-with(Mit-sein). In f^e Human Condition Hannah Arendt took Heidegger'sdistinction one step further by rephrasing subject-oriented interestsas " interesse": "These interests constitute, in the words ofthe mostliteral significance, something which inter-est, which lies betweenpeople and therefore can relate and bind them together. Mostaction and speech is concerned with this in-between..." (Arendt1958; 182). This ontology of the in-between - this "esse" of the"inter" - needs to be explicitated within radical mediocrity. In thefinal analysis, the "psychological" surplus of generosity and thesubstance of creativity - Aristotle's megalopsychia - consist ofthis self-reflective in-between. Unreflected inter-esse asks for "thecombination of 'de-interesting and re-interesting' in a nondual typeof morality" (Sill: 411).

6. MICROPOLITICAL ART: INTERMEDIALITY AS THEINFRASTRUCTURE OF THE GESAMTKUNSTWERKFrom the imperative that we have to become lighter (i.e. enlightened),Sloterdijk draws political consequences. Strategies that favorheaviness over lightness in terms of resignation (Ge/assenhe/t)and recycling, and ideologies that still define human relations interms of oppression are declared "miserabilistic." Scapegoats arethe Green parties and "the Old Left." But is it enough to affirm theantigravitational flows and criticize "gravitational conservatism"?Does Sloterdijk's "jovial" perspective suffice to "convert" radicalmediocrity? What kind of politics does he propose? Is resistancestill an option?

There was an implicit acknowledgement of resistance in Critiqueof Cynical Reason - albeit romantic - but in Die Sonne und der Tod itis no longer defined as resistance to oppression and injustice in the

^ political sense (ST: 262,284,287). After criticizing Lacan, resistancefc to the effort ofthe analyst to unlock the fixated reality principle of hisO patient is no option either. Perhaps the deco n struct! on ist's res/stanceCM

| j or restance as a principally nonanalyzable rest can be recognized= in "the refusal to follow the rules of one's own game" (ST: 285).g Sloterdijk favors an avant-garde-inspired notion of resistance. Withinu his general science of revolution, this is understood as explicitation.

Avant-garde practices connect art and politics.Inhabiting the Greenhouse - a thermotope (SHI: 396) - means

we are still haunted by scarcity. "In the absence of a convincing

RESCALING SLOTERDIJK'S GRANDIOSE AESTHETIC STRATEGY

thermic socialism, for the time being we have to be content witha thermic aesthetics" (Sill: 405). His affinity with the avant-gardenot only explains Sloterdijk's aversion to the mediocre They; It alsosheds light on the political premise of his exaggerative reasoning:revising definite options and deciding against exclusion. Theapproving remarks on Joseph Beuys's artistic practice give us aclue.̂ *^ Sloterdijk explicitly refers to Beuys's concept ofthe "socialsculpture" {Sozial Plastik) (Sill: 661 , 811). Every generous citizenhas to become an artist, as Joseph Beuys once proposed (SMI:811). Like Foucault, Sloterdijk favors creativity over autonomy. Ifaestheticization is needed for enduring monstrosity, is Foucault'sproposal of an aesthetics of existence then an option? Can werecognize Sloterdijk's exaggerative reasoning in Foucault's attempt toconnect truth games with spirituality beyond religious interpretationsas "the form of practices which postulate that, such as he is, thesubject is not capable of the truth, but that, such as it is, the truthcan transfigure and save the subject" (Foucault 2004: 17)?

In our comfortable Greenhouse the great divide between life andart, art and nonart, high and low culture is superseded. The super-installation - a s an "inclusiveconcept of artificiality [Kunst/fchkeit]"(Sill: 813) that "'integrates' all subcultures" - demands an aestheticattitude: "one transfers the form ofthe museum to the system as awhole and moves around in it as a visitor" (SIM: 818). Cruising publicspace demands museological sensibility. But how is this stimulated?Does society become a Gesamtkunstwerk? Sloterdijk has alreadyexcluded this option. The Crystal Palace is beyond a total work of art,because the risk has to be avoided that "a culture that organizes atotal middle" becomes "totalitarian" (VM: 95). Reflecting the interis better served by the desire that installs a total work of art. BazonBrock qualified this as "an inclination [Hang] towards the total workof art" (see Szeemann et al. 1983).

A genealogy of the Gesamtkunstwerk - starting with Germanidealism via Wagner and Wiener Werkstatte, Arts & Crafts, Merzbau,Bauhaus, and Surrealism^' - shows that it never realized itself toa full extent without becoming totalitarian. However, in its constantfailure to totalize art as life, it fully explored the space in betweendisciplines, media, and in between the artist and his audience. Theinter is the "cement" of a Gesamtkunstwerk. This is articulated ininterdisciplinary, multimedia, and interactive art practices. To borrow "jAdorno's phrase, the totalization (das ganz GroSe) is the false. The Ptruth is in its failure. In failing it shows us its truth: the inter. O

Sloterdijk favors art practices that relate precisely by resisting Htheir own rules. That explains his emphasis on surrealism in his gTate lecture. More than any other art "style," surrealism - and hespecially Dafi - is interdisciplinary, multimedial, and interactive. oIn the past fifteen years these elements have been conceptualizedin art-theoretical debates as intermediality (see Oosterling 2003a,2003b, 2004a).^*^ Concepts such as "relational architecture" (Rafael

HENK OOSTERLING

Lozano-Hemmer) have been invented to express the binding forceof instaliations in pubiic space. More than dropping an art objectin open space, intermedial art practices refiect upon and intend totransform the way people relate to each other via art. it is no longerart in pubiic space, but art as public space.

The consequences for the acceptance of a medioiogicai conditionbased on generosity "are far reaching in the morai domain" (SIM:807) because freedom and a sense of justice can no longer beunderstood "without the phantasm of equality of ail with regard toluxury in materiai terms" (Sill: 820). £x negat;Ve, this phantasmfocuses Sioterdijl<'s poiitico-aesthetic strategy. "We are enteringan era of new games of enlightenment" (VM: 63). Their target isaesthetic reflectivity, in a Deleuzean turn, this means that beingrooted in media (i.e. radicai mediocrity) has to be eniightened tothe point of becoming an eniightened rhizomatic inter. No roots,just routes. This "conversion" has far-reaching anthropoiogicaiimplications. Against the background ofthe intended megalopsychia,creativity no ionger resides in, but in-between individuais. Creativityis first and foremost reiatlonal. Cooperation, participation, andinteraction no longer presuppose individuals. These come to thefore in creativity.

NOTES1. See: http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/webcasts/spheres_

of_action/.2. It is this concept of the "demon" that iHeidegger takes from

Holderiin's work. He transformed it into das Unheimliche (uncanny).See Heidegger (1982: 150).

3. Alongside the three voiumes of Spharen - /. Biasen, II. Globen.III. Schaume [SI,SII,Slli] - he pubiished Im Weltinnenraum desKapitals. Fur eine philosophische Theorie der Globalisierung[WIK] in order to clarify the phenomenon of globalization and itsaesthetico-poiitical impiications more specifically. Since thereare no pubiished translations avaiiabie yet, ali quotes are mytranslations.

4. See Sioterdijk [NG] (2001:164-6); Sloterdijk and Heinrichs [ST](2001: 291).

5. In his Tate lecture Sioterdijk himseif transiates the German^ "Explikation" as "explicitation'^to unfold in the sense of expiicitiyH making things.O 6. in Im selben Boot. Versuch uber Hyperpolitik. Sloterdijk makesj j a distinction between megalomania and megalopathia. Aristotleg transformed Aiexandre the Great's megalomania into megalopathiaI3 as a lived experience that engenders big questions. The poiis haso become part of giobal space. For two millennia megalopathia has

been phiiosophy's raison d'etre. See Sloterdijk (1993a: 29). Seealso Sli: 303, n. 130. He refines this concept In later interviewsby defining late modern phiiosophy as megalo-depressive, as

RESCAUNG SLOTERDIIK'S GRANDIOSE AESTHETIC STRATEGY

an inter-pathoiogy or inter-mania. See the Aliiez article in thisvoiume, pp. 307-26. It is this "inter" that I will explore in thisarticle.

7. Nietzsche first came to the fore in Critique of Cynical Reason inwhich he has the highest reference index, foiiowed by Diogenes,Marx, Freud, and Hitler. Thinker on Stage, Nietzsche's Materialism(1989) is fuiiy focused on Nietzsche. And up to the last pagesof Im Weltinnenraum des Kapitals Sloterdijk's verbal avalancheis spiced with Nietzschean phrases updated by references toFrench neo-Nietzschean thinkers.

8. The word "Inter-esse" is German for "interest." However, it alsomeans "to be interested in." In a phiiosophicai context thisconnotation is used in a iiterai sense: being (esse) in between(inter).

9. Lyotard is mentioned oniy once in SpAiaren together with Badiouand other thinkers of difference. They are criticized for their"poiitical infinitism" (Sil: 410). I come back to this point in theiast paragraph ofthis section.

10. See the conciuding remarks of Waiter Benjamin, The Work ofArt in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935).

11 . Neither is Negri and Hardt's Empire, their name for the CrystalPalace. Their proposal is rejected by Sioterdijk as too totalitariana project for "revolutionary" ends (Sill: 825).

12. See the interview with Eric Ailiez, this volume, pp. 307-26.13. Stoterdijk by the way does not join the debate. The three are

waiting in vain at the end ofthe book.14. He refers for this method to Gunther Anders (1980). See aiso

NG: 362.15. The essay "What is solidarity with metaphysics in the moment

of its downfail?" has as its subtitie "A notice on critical andexaggerated/hyperboiic (uberfrf'ebene) reason" (NG: 235).

16. In Critique of Cynical Reason (1987) he refers exclusiveiy toMichel Foucauit, with just an incidentai remark on Derrida. Butin Spharen Foucault is sideiined by Kristeva, and even moreby Deleuze and Guattari, who are by then definiteiy Sloterdijk'smost favored traveiing companions.

17. In this text Lyotard deais with different kinds of iiterarygenres.

18. Here a paraliei can be drawn with Fatal Strategies (1983) by wJean Baudriliard, published in the same year as Critique of £Cynical Reason. The latter criticizes diaiectical thinking too and preplaces sublation with excess. At the very beginning of this Htext, the end of dialectics is proclaimed and the advent of an Sera envisaged, the dynamics of which will no longer be ruled by Bdialectical subiation. it is the iogic of excess that ruies. 5

19. For me the enigmatic expression "eine totaie Mitte" is asynonym for "radicai mediocrity" that will be explored in thenext paragraph.

HENK OOSTERLING

20. See www.petersloterdijk.net/german/topoi/stadtenergetik.html.

2 1 . it is, however, surprising that he does not mention Kristeva'snondjscursive "semiotike" in order to stress the importanceof the acoustic-tactile embedding of desire that subverts itsdiscursive articulation.

22. See the writings of the present director of the McLuhan Institute:Derrick de Kerckhove (1997: 4 ^ ) .

23. Sioterdijk understands spheroiogy as a "delightenment"(Abkiarung), i.e. a dis-eniightenment of our burdened existence.The delight of wine tast ing- in which context the term Abkiarungmeans "clarification" - is implied in this spherological"decanting" (SV: 122-3).

24. This is the topic of another "trans-Heideggerian" Nancy (2002).See Oosteriing (2005a).

25. In Heideggerian terms, the ephemerai interest as an indifferentattitude needs to be transformed to existential inter-esse. See(1978: 347). See aiso Being and Time, o.c, p. 124.

26. Utero-topicaiiy as a "community art" analogous to the group asutero-tope [L/terotop] (Sill: 392);thermo-toplcallyin theguiseofBeuys's work of art The honeypump (Slli: 404) that reminds usof a "sweet life": as an example for the "era ofthe uplifting"that can be seen as "a critique of 'heavy' reason" (SMI: 733).

27. His lecture at the Tate focuses mainly on surrealism.28. The outcome of this research can be found at www2.eur.nl/fw/

cfk (accessed 12/5/06) .

REFERENCESAnders, Gunther. 1980. Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen: Uber die

Seele im Zeitalter der zweiten industrieilen Revoiution. Band 1.Ch. Munchen: Beck Verlag.

Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago and London:The University of Chicago Press.

Bachelard, Gaston. 1994. The Poetics of Space. Boston: The BeaconPress.

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