Transgression
(Redux).
Heroic
gesture, defiance of the gods (against impossible odds), a message augmented by
shock, the politics of affront, an abject fouling, a sense of inner disgust,
from symbolic outrage to the contrast at the heart of today’s globalised
post-conceptual art - all are covered by the term, ‘transgression’. Clearly a
catch-all buzz word or empty signifier permitting many meanings - capable,
perhaps, of being all things to all men (sic). What is the meaning, or better
(as we are faced with a plurality of meanings) what is the function of this
ever popular chameleon?
Origins in childhood. The desire to do what ever it is that we were not
supposed to do; the attraction and pleasure springing as much from the sense of
misbehavior as from the object of desire itself…
Wicked joy! But it is the Law that
reflects the pleasure (which must pass through its breaking); the joy is
dependant on the prohibition and not the object. Transgression: the continuing
habits of the naughty child into adolescence and beyond….
Key
is the notion of a line stepped-over; but whose line, and why? In this lies a
world of difference. Or many worlds… Anyway, at least
two: self and other; the other insulted (even if the other is to be found
hidden deep in the self).
Acts of transgression:
blasphemy as the taunting of another’s god; or blasphemy as an act committed by
the believer against his or her own god. A world of
difference.
Indeed, unless we define
transgression as simply just another rule-break, then its special (intense)
flavour is best accounted for by assuming complicity between Transgression and
Law such that we may say: transgression, to be worthy of the name, must be
either an act against ones own gods or the taunting of another’s gods imagined
as if ones own…
Whence ritual
transgression; a gift for the exterior to cement our interior – cast in the
form of a gesture; today providing our received form of identity exchange – its
sense of renewal powered by radical refusal (if oft disguised to conceal its
inherent conservatism).
Three aspects to transgression.
First
aspect of transgression (anthropology: external and inward): the external,
manifested in a clash of communities, beliefs, of (ideological or
emotionally-engaged) points of view – either witnessed or participated-in as a
believer in the final truth of one(‘s) camp: the
inward, or experiential sense of transgression is marked by a sense of
sacrilege, often manifesting a divided self (source and resource of literature,
tragedy, religion).
Second
aspect of transgression (politics: subjective and objective); two major (and
opposing) viewpoints on the nature of transgression. The view from within, the
subjective point of view, offers transgression as a rebellion against another’s
god or ones own, implied is an ‘inversion of values’ such that high and low,
good and evil are exchanged (but not exceeded); such a position remains
‘fundamentalist’, in the sense of having sole ownership of the last word,
permitting no other, so denouncing, demarcating a fallen, damned and abjected Other.
By
contrast, the view from without, the objective or measured overview offers the
larger or new ‘inside’ of tolerance, recognising others, recognising
difference. In this light ‘transgression’ is a border dispute between communities.
The unity of subjective and objective approaches may be found in the case where
a person’s felt belief system or network of (visceral) allegiances my be with
one camp, but where this identification does not obviate their ability to take
a distancing or ‘objective’ stance – the difference between ‘liberal’ and
‘fundamentalist’ believers, or members, of a given community.
Transgression as bold
mark of rebellion: or acme of complicity?
Transgression as inside
or outside (as the means of escape, or another aspect of the chain that binds
us)?
Third
aspect of transgression (rhetoric: inside and outside): is the act of
transgression in fact a form of breaking out or is it rather another proof of
membership of the club one would disclaim, the badge being worn as negative
rather than the usual positive, a way of being tied-in by being shown the
limits?
This latter, is most
clearly seen to be operating when we think we are exchanging religions or other
forms of belief system, when we believe that we are progressing outwards, but
are in fact remaining, even returning, inwards. Even more simply the assertion
of identity (the true function of such generational gestures) as found in a
child’s tantrums or an adolescent rebellion are a part this aspect of transgression
where the actor does not even change sides (the assertion of self is sufficient
and requires no further changes).
Absolutely
Inside.
A trope, such that the observed excess (sic) indicates that
the very opposite is true (‘methinks they protest too much’). A
hyperbolic irony, or litotes. An
‘inoculation’… serving the status quo (Barthes).The more we think we are ‘out’
the more ‘in’ we are…
The
Absolute Outside.
Metaphysical (and the politics of such a metaphysics); transgression as an
escape route, a portal onto an unknown beyond… access to an absolute outside (Bataille). As a phenomenological comprehension of the
religious use of transgression in ritual, this is a permissible description;
but as a factual description of a state of affairs it falls prey to the myth it
should expose. Also appropriated as a means of political escape,
or exacerbation of the actual (for example, Capital) so that it would reach its
end faster… and reveal what lies beyond… (Baudrillard,
Lyotard).
Transgression
as debasement, abjection, defilement; but of what (or whose…)?
(First frame of
transgression: the Law without; the fouling of another’s sacred places).
All think they (all) can
use it, can know it, can mobilise it… all: but by definition transgression, in
order to be transgression can only be the provenance of some… Someone is
deluding themselves. Some (one) or All are deluding
themselves…
It
is the same with transgression as with the notion of the ’individual’- to the
putative assertion of which transgression is tied, in the modern epoch. Only
more so: as it is more intense. Something the fashion industry comprehends very
well. Indeed a fact well-digested by any industry intent on gaining its profits
from the pockets of the adolescent; a delusion bred of generational difference,
extended by the joy of the market in having discovered a constituency with a
disposable income.
Like the individual, the
cult of (not as in one cult, the cult of one, but the cult of being one) the
cult of being an individual; the sense of being such; against everybody else
(or at least the majority, the ‘herd’ who must be defined as such in order to
provide the necessary backdrop to allow the ‘few’ to believe in their own
individuality). All believe they belong to this set, that they are such; all
before others… before all others…All? But when we are all then there are no
others…And when all are individuals
-believe themselves to be such, to be individuals- then no one is an
individual, there are none such; or the definition becomes severely attenuated.
It is the same with transgression… we are the only ones who rebel, the only
ones who have the right to transgress, to gainsay the Law.
Whence the importance of transgression – and
socially sanctioned transgression at that – to generational fashions and
attitudes. The permanent revolution so important to
adolescent self-assertion (and so the markets dependant upon this phase of
human personality development) the rejection of which is such an important
measure of our adulthood; yet which many are increasingly reluctant to give-up
(last –if negative- certainty in an uncertain world; the art of no-saying as
the last defence of a challenged individualism).
But when all transgress…
then there is no transgression (and perhaps no longer any law). Much depends
upon whether we are transgressing another’s Law or our own…
And yet transgression is
always at the service of a greater Law (another’s Law).
(Not least, for it would
not be transgression if it were not interiorised… no longer the attack on the
Other(s), but on the Same; on the Other(s) within…)
(Second frame of
transgression: the Law within; the fouling of ones own sacred place).
(Moreover, from a certain point of view, transgression
can only be of our own Law… otherwise it would not be felt as such; otherwise
it is just another form of other
baiting – where it is only from their point of view that we are transgressing…)
History. Anthropology. Archives. The evidence. All and everything written on these subjects,
on the role of transgression in ritual, on the role of ritual in social life…
reinforces the notion of transgression as conservative. With
a small ’c’, as a force for conservation. As a limited
undoing, at the behest of a greater re-doing, a refashioning and rebirth of the
social order. A blood transfusion reviving the felt
aspect of social identities. Literary survival; the return of order at
the end of the tragedy (early Classical Greek tragedies were originally ritual
performances).
All at the behest of an ego
that would exalt itself beyond all Law; only to tumble back into the arms of
its awaiting parents, as the impossibility of such a position becomes
terrifyingly clear… For reason may work with laws, but emotion with the Law.
Or, if we take the view from without, with a Law… for everyone has a cultural
base and its breaking can only result in two outcomes, we desecrate and return,
shamefaced to our centre of emotional gravity; or we desecrate and find our
absolution in the adoption of another’s Law (usually -structurally- no
different to that which obtained before…).
Therefore
transgression is not what it appears to be… or perhaps appearance is all it
is …a sign which bears the opposite
meaning to the one it professes; a sign which hides its conservational
functionalism behind the mask of rebellion (of standing out… standing alone…). Irony? Hypocrisy? Or idiocy?
So at its most
self-conscious transgression evinces a rhetoric designed to move us from one
camp into another. From the service of one Law to another Law (where there is
any change of Law at all, for it may be that the transgressive
act was just a way of reconfirming who belongs to whom, who serves whom and
just how far they can be let out on a leash as the measure of their loyalty,
indeed the proof of that loyalty, the slipping of that leash and voluntary
return - the devotion of a dog out for a run, at all times awaiting its
master’s whistle before turning tail and running full tilt towards home).
Whence
the notion of transgression as radical? With the world (and each and every
nation state) as the home of plural communities, and weakening centres – ‘the
flag’ included, the impinging on another’s identity is easily done, a new
social politeness required (tolerance of the other), and the scoring off
another becomes an easy way to reconfirm ones own (weak or threatened, or
socially underrated) community of identity. The baiting of other groups becomes
an easy mode of entertainment and identity confirmation.
Transgression as (of) the
other group’s right. Who dares transgresses (looks good, looks ‘brave’). Who
wins no longer transgresses (‘meet the new boss’).
Two
sources of the modern myth of transgression: ‘doing ones own thing’ (‘I just wanna be free’): as against everybody else (like
individualism, but too often showing a communitarian face). Breaking the(ir) rules (‘Well, they’re just
asking for it’): deliberately breaking other’s taboos, the realm of
provocation, calculated insult, symbolic violence (and beyond)… Turning the other’s world upside down… (the ‘world-turned-upside-down’, as it really is…)
Most popular myth of
transgression: ‘carnival’; ‘the-world-turned-upside-down’, actually existing as
pogrom (or ‘other’ baiting) by any other name. The tragedy here consists of the
fact that those apparently trying to speak for the powerless… are actually
covering up for the suppression of the powerless (the historically
actually-existing carnival as home of the pogrom, anti-female especially if
aged, the disabled and deformed, and of course that standard of othering in the West, anti-Semitism, often defended as
being ‘anti-banker’… whereas in truth the cry of anti-banker, or
anti-moneylender, has always been the cry of the anti-Semite (where not the
feudal lord out to avoid repayment of his loans). In actuality a riot by groups
of young men, often led by or in league with the sons of the privileged group,
the aristocracy, now in league with the sons of the lower orders - against all the ‘others’….
One
source of these recent myths is the older myth of… the Enlightenment. The
Enlightenment myth of a post-ritual, so rational society… would tell us of a
world where transgression is peripheral… marginal… or should, or soon will, be;
if only we would follow their belief
system, swallow their myth (a smug and superior use of bad anthropology for
self-aggrandisement). In practice rituality has survived the rule of reason by
fusing with the rule of the commodity. Ritual transgression then becomes an
expression of commodified identity exchange.
Transgression
as identity confirmation or assertion; but for all (not just performance of a
radical few); that ‘few-as-all’ trope again… (synecdoche
as the favourite trope of identity). First the cloaking of
numbers, then… the search for another. If we pursue transgression then,
by definition, someone, somewhere must be offended… who will provide the
scapegoat for this (always) ‘soft’ or easy target?
Many politicians, and
some political theorists (perhaps most famously, Carl Schmitt), have been all
too happy to provide an answer to this question.
A
question best left unanswered.
How it works:
Transgression as ritual.
Transgression
as ritual rhetoric, tied to the politics of expenditure, and to another kind of
the politics of sacrifice, that of victim-hood, the appropriation of
victim-hood as a way of casting the negative (witness the sacrifice of the
self, or the Same, as a means of damning the Other,
from the Saint’s Life to modern minorities or community-based agitprop).
Including its further appropriation in the case of adolescence, where
generational difference from the point of view of the attitudinal teenager
offers us the ‘victim of society’ form of attention seeking. (This the weakest
form of the disease of recognition: the strongest being murder, of groups… or
of famous individuals, they weight the same in the media scales… the scales of
notoriety).
Margin as centre: the
mapping of identity by the limit (Foucault); generational difference as
‘radicalism’ -left and right- in the post war period (just as it was in the
pre-world war period… see the initial trajectories of Futurism and
Constructivism, later to be co-opted by Fascism and Communism).
Transgression
as lining (framing), the limit of, walls of, as supports for and foundations
of, structure, what holds and houses, and fills, the whole… within. The wall of negation which encloses the positive sanctuary. (Bright well of the sacred.)
A sanctuary which once was all.
Contained all. For so long was one. Is
no longer. Is now absent. A
hole… within. (Dark well of the sacred).
A fount of absence.
A hole defended by transgression, definition (of self/community, the positing
of a Whole) against… one kind of identity. (A hole to be filled by the ashes of
sacrifice, by the blood sprinkled on burnt offerings). Fear of an other, of all others (‘paranoia’)… as something to be
combated - yet not easily overcome…
Dismantling
transgression: dismantling the power structures that feed it (within); or the
clash of communities that stoke symbolic (and actual) violence (without).
Retaining transgression:
as narrative, tragedy (ritual) part of the genres of the division in the self;
the salt of sexual play (fantasy, acting out, imagining).
Fragile enough to demand
transgression to form it and defend it… still…in our rational times (when other
supports have gone…) deemed irrational.
Favourite
badge of delusion; another sign of permanent adolescence in a society in search
of the perfect consumer.
©Peter Nesteruk, 2009