Conversation Mbelhaj Kacem Dkokene Libre

it and if so how? Art gets its power from putting its nose into everything because its not only an aesthetic form but integrates social, political and economic matters.On this matter the artists who are non-Western or so-called emerging identities, name given by the global culture referring to the country of origin known as emerging, are taking a risk as soon as they decide to stand for or expose their gestures/works. This might mean that we are at a turning-point, but a turning-point which is as relative as its disappointing since these artists havent managed to surpass this globalisation just like it is hard for them to surpass local prohibitions. It must be said though that an artist that comes within a hairs breadth of breaking away or does something a little bit out of the ordinary in Algeria, in Sudan or in Saudi-Arabia is risking far more than a European artist acting in the same way. The question is whether reappropriation might be a way to overcome an idea, that here can be called dominant or authoritarian, and if so doesnt it put the artist deploying it in the society where this authority is ruling in danger? From my point of view it does, whether it deals with politico-religious matters or not. The paradox is that this action looses its impact when its not heard. And according to me the paradox goes further as it seems to me that the action creates more artistic attitudes in the citizen than it does in the artist because it invents modes of life in order to survive the asphyxia in which the citizen nds himself. This shows that this identication isnt reserved for the stranger in exile but that it concerns every individual.Its clear that we need strong emotions, but even that has become an experiment industry so rightly said by Jeremy Rifkins. This doesnt prevent this fear as an affect or emotion of course. In the same way that the little whats left of the death of God, which hasnt disappeared, is enough to provoke fears, to get the lost sheep back on tracks.Now when you talk about Nazism, of the return of the religious, isnt it to show that all that depends on metaphysics?M. B-K : Indeed youre right. Its nally all about guring out what this impotence of the thought is which today makes it possible to have a return of the religious. The important thing here is to ask the questions on which Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger might have been wrong and the question concerning the death of God. God is really dead. The question is where the metaphysics, the great philosophy, have in the last two centuries failed so that the corpse of God was badly buried ?And thats where we redeploy the perspective and say to ourselves: we nd ourselves in a sort of parenthesis where, for reasons which are complex

to explain here, there is a return of God. But our destiny is the death of God and living in an outlook without God! And there you have him sprawling out in massive gold, and thats nally what we have, apart from the depressive side, which is precious in our era. On one side we have atheisms compulsory tendency to dwell on the dark side (discovered by the French democratic nihilism thirty years ago) and on the other side people who believe in God and who are often more interesting and dignied than this sort of atheism and nally this religious fanaticism leading the world. How come God was badly buried? Thats what this world, in its massive obviousness, shows us like an open grave.In an interview Michel Houellebecq said: I am a forever lost atheist. Houllebecqs strength is having brought further the French democratic nihilism with all the consequences it implies. And a lot of these things are also found in French contemporary art. Nicolas Bourriauds link with the magazine Perpendiculaire for example is Gods death. But it carries here the meaning of limited, nitude, tendency to dwell on the dark side, the depressive and the sordid, etc. That means that Gods death is what we can call a theological-existential destiny which is far worse than when God existed. Badiou has said somewhere: I am the only atheist! And hes absolutely right. The atheism of Nietzsche or Heidegger had faults; it was an atheism which still mourned over God. The philosophical and metaphysical atheism of Badiou is a perfect one that can be transmitted all over the world. I am thinking of the example of the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama4 who develops a link both with the absence of God as with innity. And that is what I nd interesting. Its not because God is dead that we are condemned to nitude, which is the French democratic nihilisms central doctrine. For Nietzsche, as far as the doctrinal is concerned, as for Heidegger, the God = nitude is even more accentuated. Badiou on the other hand comes with something like God= a nondenominational innity.D. K : This idea of nitude relates clearly back to the Kantian idea of the sublime concerning the unlimited and innity.To move on to something else, the industrial revolution in the Western part of the world put all of the other civilisations upside down making us enter the history of the global network. That way, ever since the French Revolution and the epic of Napoleon, when the Western world took on the mission to bring civilisation to the rest of the world, it has kept spreading to all continents, affecting by inltration all of the existing cultures of the world. Ever since then the great project of modernity has, despite resistance in the elds concerning faith and traditions, inuenced everyones habits

and customs.For that purpose, the ways of living inside the Arab and ultra-conservative societies (which are allies of the USA) such as Saudi-Arabia and Kuwait which are monarchies completely integrated in Western capitalism, are modelled on the Westerners ways of living as far as the material and monumental is concerned. With its vein of buildings shining as they tower up over the town, Dubai is the new Manhattan. Still, thinking in terms of atheism is still possible just like it is possible to live as an atheist although only in the most intimate inner-room of ourselves. Its pathological because its directly the customs that are to be completely modied. And that is where it starts to get complicated because we are getting into collective rules strongly imposed by the politico-religious regulating the functioning of society.Today we see the coming of a local critic, both on the side of artists and intellectuals, but it remains marginal. But no real proposition is made because there is this fear of falling into what you are criticising, that is to say this cynical nitude which contemporary art is inspired by. Yet in these societies contemporary art, although the term remains somewhat vague and yet to be dened, follows the Western model, and its not a reproach, and this herd instinct is most of the time forty years behind. We nd ourselves in an exaggerated form of expressionism giving birth to a neo-Orientalism. What might be called an opening down there will be seen as reactionary and even rearguard up here. Thats why the artists coming from a background of immigration, as we call them on this Northern side of the Mediterranean Sea, nd themselves refused the possibility to be completely atheist as this interjection reminds us: Are you eating pork? Maybe its necessary to rst get rid of the branding done both by society and the media.M. B-K : I would like to make a remark on the expression youth coming from a background of immigration, jeunes issus de limmigration. It is only used when talking about North Africans. And thats the kind of denial brought by the tyrannical consensus of the French democracy. The other night Zahia Rahmani, an Algerian novelist and intellectual having among other things written the novel Muslim, was on television defending it instead of saying thats enough.D. K : I completely agree with you. This expression has become an expression by default just like the message you get on your computer, establishing categories which are but a way of creating ghettoes and that way reducing it to communitarism, which is of course out of the question. M. B-K : Thats true indeed, but why youth coming from a background of immigration? Its even less used to talk of blacks. Blacks are either

illegal immigrants, clandestins or sans-papiers, or sub-Saharans, something which is dangerous. We never say of blacks that they are youth coming from a background of immigration for a very simple reason, Martinique and Guyana are for example still French. And the most surprising of all, I got to understand that through football. While watching Infosport, I accidentally saw le Ballon dOr (the Golden ball) being given to Fabio Canavarro. And talking about Thierry Henry who once more hadnt received this prize Daniel Bravo5 who is used to blundering said: you know Thierry Henry and criticised him for not having received the Golden ball. One could feel that he was about to go further and he continued: you see a Cannavarro is smiling all the time and is always looking like a nice man whereas Thierry Henry isnt making any effort to look like a nice man. And thats where Daniel Bravo gets completely out of his mind, and the other consultants send him one of these looks, but nothing more happens although what hes saying is completely outrageous: You see Thierry Henry, when he was at home, referring to the match between France and Costa Rica taking place in Martinique, and scored, well when he scored, he felt at home, he was pleased and smiled, and added why doesnt he do that all the time? You see whats lying under this; it means that when hes playing in Europe, in England or in France, hes not really home. On the contrary in Martinique it is, because its implied that at home hes smiling and is happy. So we ask him why he doesnt do more and so on when hes in France. Thats my reaction to this expression of youth coming from a background of immigration.I also made the link with the novelist and intellectual Zahia Rahmani. Why doesnt she say thats enough! Why dont we talk of a Vietnamese or a Jew or someone with Spanish origins or an Argentinean that he/she is coming from a background of immigration? Once again I am thinking of football and David Trezeguet. We dont say that he is a youngster coming from a background of immigration although he hardly spoke French ten years ago! No, that would be strange. No, its the North African we are aiming at. Thats one of the reasons why we talk about colonisation today. We only use the words youngster from a background of immigration when we talk of a Tunisian, an Algerian or a Moroccan. In the media at the moment, such outrageousness is omnipresent. Weve had enough of this expression of youth coming from a background of immigration when were down to the third generation! It shouldnt be necessary to make a comparison with the yellow star! Its clear that from that point of view it is a way of marking as you say; youth coming from a background of immigration only concerns Arabs or North Africans. D. K : We nd this phenomenon again in current art. And to go further,

certain artists dont hesitate to use this expression as a foil. It sells easier because it legitimizes an elsewhere in which one has been oppressed, which is not necessarily wrong, and thats whats regrettable about it. But is that a reason for stressing ones state of the one in exile or exhibiting ones original identity so as to win and gain recognition for ones art?M. B-K : Its true; the problem is that we simply feel trapped between the non-democratic regimes of North Africa or the more general so-called Third World and the obligatory nitudes nihilism. In other words, in order to stay in France or England you have to consent to the democratic nihilism if you want to be an artist in the action and not isolated and alone. Theres no other solution.D. K : Were indeed trapped, on the pretext of democracy and modernity. It seems important to add that this situation in which we nd ourselves back up against the wall should lead to imaging a faith in the world itself. And without doubts havent you got there a political potential going beyond the faith in another world, to quote Deleuze and Guattari? Dont we lack a hero in this small and oppressive world or has he disappeared behind or in favour of the gure of the martyr?M. B-K : And in this context, we might ask ourselves what kind of way is possible to take for an Arab artist. And I think as you say that the time has come to redeem a sort of heroism. As far as myself is concerned, I have started to nd some real answers, but only by working hard. As far as the artist is concerned the answer lies in his singularity. I could myself have died from the situation in which, as I told Jean-Claude Milner6, I nd myself not able to either live down there or up here; Ill throw myself into the Mediterranean Sea, thats what Ill do. There are days when you feel a bit like that, a bit like the Palestinians. Ive heard an illegal immigrant say, In Africa I am French and in France I am African. Everything is said with these words.D. K : Is a Palestinian full of explosives throwing himself into a crowd a sign of that theres no longer any hope left? Doesnt death constitute a, although small, limit for the Western society as is evoked by the philosopher Slavoj Zizek7? Through a double distinction he shows two things. Through a rst distinction which is inspired by Nietzsche and between passive and active nihilism, he shows that the Westerners are immerged in stupid daily pleasures whereas the radical Muslims are ready to sacrice everything, even their lives. Then, through a Hegel-inspired distinction concerning the dialectic of the Master and the slave, Zizek shows that the Westerners arent in the position of the master but in that of the slave clinging to life and daily pleasures opposing the Muslim and pauperized

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radicals who are in the position of the master, ready to risk their lives.If there is a technological ingurgitation from the radical Muslims side (which is what they think to be the best the Westerners have to offer) aesthetic ingurgitation or reappropriation seems to stay restricted to forms and a modernistic conception of art. We are here talking of a failure in the sense that the artists (who live by the way just like the radical Muslims) havent really fullled their wishes. In opposition to the rst ones, the artists dont seem to really seize the overproduction of signs which is imposed on us, of course not sparing any of the countries of these regions. This shows that we are still far from a global aesthetic ingurgitation by the artists called emerging artists, although the signs impose themselves on us, aim us and our sub-consciousness and take part in a war trying to obtain the power over our affects.In this context how is it possible to talk of subversion or any form of deance? What is of course far from the subversion we can see in Europe, and more particularly in France, itself a failure. The punk attitude which was a true subversive attitude towards the system has become a trend to entertain the new middle class looking for some adventure. We nd ourselves today in a clean dirty trend not implying any risk or even less a critic or a resistance. So we have to go and look elsewhere. Whats fashion up here is a disturbing attitude down there.M. B-K : It must be said that for thirty years weve been facing an outlook of nal destruction of all transcendent values, the fullment of nihilisms legacy. Thats why Ive been interested in Agambens notion (Agamben is a great thinker of nihilism) of profanation and the concept of nihilism itself for a long time. The fascist project was a failure, not to talk about that of Nazism, and that of communism seems to be over But in the end what isnt a failure? Isnt democratic nihilism about to go, as far as the American international politics the last 50 years are concerned, to rack and ruin? There are no more horrors resulting from the American model than there were after Nazism and Stalinism. But what I really want to say is if we today see a return of nuns and monks its because they live in the absolute.The question is how to reinvent the divine inexistence as an absolute? And that question has been very well been put forward by the young philosopher Quentin Meillassoux. Divine inexistence as an absolute which is no longer the same, that is to say without God. And thats where Nietzsche and Heidegger, despite their genius, failed completely, something which gave room for the nitude doctrinal. And it failed because atheism as a form is from what suffers and even die the Western democracies. No reason

to delude oneself, no matter what we say its impossible to solve the problem of Islamism (and therefore not of evangelism- 94 % of the Americans are devout believers- or Zionism either) if we dont attack the metaphysical outlook of Gods death which has prevailed for the last two centuries. Something failed in the theories of Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger; the corpse was badly buried. How is that?The problem in itself is not really Islamism or the American hegemony, etc; the problem is really this ideology and this mental landscape in which weve been for the last thirty years at least, the equation Gods death=nitude because fascism and communism managed to make an absolute out of atheism. It is easily forgotten. Were prisoners of the present, which has something catastrophic about it because it is as if nothing has preceded it and nothing will ever come after it. In my opinion weve lost a minimal feeling of history. And to me the question concerning atheism as an absolute is our destiny. Having witnessed the failures of fascisms and communisms I believe them to have been successful failures. We must bear in mind that hundreds of millions of people in the world lived in an atheist outlook. If the Nazis exterminated the Jews it was because being a Jew for them was synonymous with monotheism. And that is what had to be put an end to. But it was also necessary to put an end to the French Revolution, egalitarianism and ghting for the poor and feeble, etc. Thats why a neo-paganism could be found in the Nazis, was strongly rooted in Nietzsche and even more in Heidegger. And through my work I saw that Heideggers ideology is straight through sacricial, and its unbelievable that you had to wait for a regular bloke like me to see that because its visible in a hundred of Heideggers texts. No Disciple of Heidegger has ever said (and I am more precisely thinking of anti-sacricial Disciples of Heidegger like Nancy and Agamben) that Heidegger is ultra-sacricial, the thematic of the sacricial soak even his roots. Even the word deconstruction, the very concept of destruction in Heidegger, is a 1) neo-pagan and 2) entirely sacricial motive, that is to say a legitimacy of the sacrice.Heidegger, who was clever as few and who has been reproached with his unacceptable silence on the matter of the extermination of the Jews during WWII, became according to me aware between 1936 and 1938 of the fact that the Nazis were preparing something of which he didnt know whether to accept, legitimize or reject the atrocity. Although he was ashamed with some of the dimensions of Nazism, fundamentally he shared their vision on the project. In 1943, Nietzsche says in his lecture on Heidegger what has been censured by French editors: Hitler and Mussolini were the only two having tempted to do something

against the European nihilism - that is to say against Christianity, the monotheism, socialism, revolution and democracy. A Jew was for the Nazis and for Hitler, a reader of Nietzsche, the resume of all that. And whats strange is that it is Jean-Claude Milner who today takes up again this antidemocratic thematic. Because later in life he and Benny Lvy8 nourish a kind of abstract Zionism by taking, without the genius, the thematic and terms of Heidegger.I say it again, after the fall of fascisms and communisms; democracy is like a nondenominational place of self-service. That is to say that with on one side the individual pleasure and the purely formal rights whereas on the other side the liberty of expression (communitarism) you have but a dead end that corresponds with the model that I call the capital-parliamentarian. And the result is all sorts of spiritual enlightenment or the equation of democratic nihilism incarnated by Houellebecq and some others. Atheism equals dwelling on the dark side and ones own depressing pleasure.D. K : Medhi, I would now like to raise the question concerning ecology, the environment. I would like to make a link taking our situation marked by globalisation into account, between everyones uniqueness and the environment. Are we dealing with a challenge that is double: The construction of an atheism which is both global and environmental? The collapse of modern myths has led to a withdrawal and to communitarism, etc. Its a question of life and death for millions of people and international relations are today extremely tense, which might be a risk for the global peace.M. B-K : It is all about seeing the peculiarities in history. Theres always a discrepancy between whats thought in politics and what is done in politics. As an example, 19th century philosophy was ultra-eschatological, but it is rst in the 20th century that politics carries out Gods death, as mans project of complete reappropriation of man. And despite everything we say, the failure of it all lies in the discrepancy between all Western philosophys taking an anti-humanist bend after Nietzsche and the fact that all policies of the 20th century, with Nazism on top, were of an extreme humanism. That vegetarianism from a very simplistic view appears in the 19th century, not before and not after, is a peculiarity in history. For a long time Ive been asking myself what an anti-humanistic policy would be like if its so that politics are always late with about a century compared to what torments philosophy. And its not until recently that I came up with the answer; of course the answer lies in ecology or in the question dealing with the new link between man and animal; all humanism is founded on a false break with animality. For example is the question of the presence of animality

in contemporary art very opaque. Ive got the impression that animalism in contemporary art doesnt know what it is doing and that it is most of the time in a kind of Darwinist and nitist spirit. In real its a kind of enormous metaphysical symptom; we are sent back to paganism, to Egyptian gods who are half men half animals. And its important to see that when youre in the presence of neo-paganism, fascism is not far away either. I really do develop this in my work.D. K : When I talked about ecology, I meant that the environment urges man to take common decisions that go beyond local and individual differences. Our real common problem is the deterioration of our ecosystem. Nobody is to be left out from a disaster like that and thats why we need to have a new look on our principles of thinking and acting. One would say that its not the mosques that are polluting. M. B-K : Thats where history is exciting and the metaphysics will ask the question over again, and thats the subject of my next book. Its about understanding whats happening to us today. And its true, we have to meet face to face this philosophical doctrinal of the nitude, that is to say that God=nitude. It is Kant who kicks it off. Hegel was not like that but unfortunately didnt Nietzsche and Heidegger follow him. Despite what people say about him, this thinker remains an innity-thinker. And the question is what did Judaism think about paganism, what did Christianity think about Judaism and what did Islam think about Christianity? Whats the discrepancy between Western metaphysics going from believing in God to the death of God and the metaphysics of Islam? And asking what went wrong in Islam is also having a closer look at what Islam did metaphysically think compared to Christianity and Judaism.Its about, that is Michel Foucaults inuence on me, describing the spiritual landscapes of paganism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, not in order to escape into the past but in order to understand our present and nd other ways to inhabit another spiritual landscape than the athe-sophical absolute were living in at the moment.D. K : In that case it is about making an inverse form of terrorism. Instead of being a religious one its an atheist one. Isnt that whats happening to liberalism?

M. B-K : It is just in order to talk about our current situation: According to me were in a weak form of atheism going from Michel Onfray to Houellebecq who are developing an atheism typically adapted for the lower middle-class.Atheism has to x an absolute outlook for man; it mustnt be the kind of

negative and sordid reversed pietism it is at the moment. It was given the name of total vision of man, totalitarianism. And afterwards, we say it was bad, but if that means that Nietzsche and Heidegger are to be substituted by Michel Onfray and Andr Glucksmann my answer is no because it is not a philosophy that gives the atheist man a consistent outlook. In Onfray we only nd a sort of weak hedonism. This sort of democratic nihilism which has been very well described by Houellebecq and a certain number of contemporary artists, is a cult without atonement, to use Walter Benjamins words about capitalism. It was even worse when you had God and you were either a believer or a sinner. I would prefer being a sinner with the representation of hell, etc. Atheism has to be as you say a global atheism, either an as exiting spiritual space to live in as that of Saint Augustus, Saint Thomas of Aquinas, of Avicenne or even the Ishmaels because their spiritual space was an absolute space, and not a romantic (the word has today caught a pejorative meaning) space, especially in art. I have for example quoted the artist Wim Delvoye9 who said, Its necessary to get out of this 19th century conception of art. I agree with him and so do many artists, showing that we have got out. But thats not a reason to think weve got out of the German romanticism. So if we believe having got out of romanticism through parody and generalised hidden meanings I would like to inform you that we havent done that at all! The themes of art, like irony and perpetual parodies, are a motive introduced by German romanticism (which was why Hegel reproached its nihilism). And contemporary art remains in the continuation of what was announced by German romanticism. This critic aims more the discourse around weve gotten out than it does the works. We havent gotten out of anything: we arent done with Kant and Aristotle; were in dialogue with them. Thats how it is in philosophy and its also the case in art.As you said before, the fault in all this is being very Kantian. Either we have, which will also be a self-criticism for my part, the sordid nitude or the access to innity, Kants sublime, but which has a pathetic past. And what contemporary art has done is removing this pathetic access to innity. Its therefore easy to see that the price to pay for this access (under the pretext of not doing any sort of pathos but parody and irony) is a kind of compulsory tendency of dwelling on the dark side and depressing relativism behind the masks: Were all fools in our minds; the important thing is to laugh. In the end it is an even bigger and generalised pathos of the nitude, hiding behind this good spirit or this dont take us seriously, we are all stupid in our minds, this sort of maniac-depressive frivolity of the branchitude (of those who are in the game). That is what impresses me in certain plays by Dan Graham because

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