The land of Autonomy

Terracotta figurine of a fox scratching his neck (Greek, late 6th–early 5th century B.C.)

Immobile Nude, Hans Bellmer, 1972

Anyone who intrigues for power while refusing the purifica­tion of renunciation (the brigand or the  tyrant) will sooner or later be tracked down and killed like  a mad dog,  or  worse: as  someone who only pursues his own ends and whose blunt disdain for “work” lacks any tact toward others’ feelings: serial killers like Troppmann, Landru, Periot were doomed to defeat because they murdered people without justifying it in the name of defending the Free World, the Christian West, the State or Human Dignity. By refusing to play the rules of the game, pirates, gangsters and outlaws  disturb  those with  good  con­sciences (whose consciences are a reflection of myth); but the masters, by killing the encroacher or enrolling him as a cop, reestablish the omnipotence of the “eternal truth”: namely, that those who don’t sell themselves lose their right to survive and those who do sell themselves lose their  right to live. 

The sacrifice of the master is  the essence  of humanism, which is what makes humanism-and let this be under­stood once and for all-the miserable negation of everything human. Humanism is the master taken seriously at his own game, acclaimed by those who see in his  apparent sacrifice (that caricatural reflection of their real sacrifice) a  reason to  hope for salvation. Justice, Dignity, Nobility, Freedom … these words that yap and howl, are they anything but household pets who have continued to reliably return  home to their masters since the time when heroic lackeys won the right to walk them on the streets?

To  use  them  is to forget that  they are the ballast that enables power to rise out of reach. And if we  imagine a regime deciding that the mythical sacrifice of the masters should not be pro­moted in such universal forms, and setting about tracking down these word-concepts and wiping them out, we could well expect the Left to be incapable of combating it with anything more than a plaintive bat­tle of words whose every phrase, invoking the “sacrifice” of a previous master,  calls for an equally mythical sacrifice of a new one (a leftist master, a  regime mowing down workers in the name of the proletariat).

Bound to the notion of sacrifice, humanism is born of the mutual fear of masters and slaves: it  is nothing but the solidarity of a shit-scared humanity. But those who reject all hierarchical power can use any word as a weapon to punctuate their action. Lautrfamont and the illegalist anarchists were already aware of this; so were the dadaists.

loving parent: because there's a manual in every board game

child: oh

child: why don't they sell cars in bookstores

loving parent: because when you're buying a board game, what you're really buying is the rules, and those are in the manual. a car manual with no car can't drive you, but if you have the manual to a board game you could play it without the pieces. there are people who can play a game of chess just by saying where they're moving the pieces and imagining the board, but it's very hard so they give you a board and pieces to help you.

loving parent: That's why you never see Mousetrap in bookstores. Because you can't play it with just the manual.

child: whats Mousetrap