On the Temporal Quality of the Normalistic Fun and Thrill Tape

To begin, a very general theoretical remark: one must differentiate between two fundamentally different varieties in the field of historical collective symbols. Within this field, among other things, I would like to define all symbols of pathways and growth, which are based on the philosophy of history as well as Walter Benjamin's "dialectical pictures." On one side, there are symbolic complexes, whose relation to the historical-social type—which is symbolized by these complexes—is merely based on a linguistic-semantic (including iconic-linguistic) similarity. Oswald Spengler's culturally constitutive symbols furnish an extreme example. Here, something like a "cave"—understood as an outward hermetically enclosed spherical form—generates the so-called Arabic culture through a series of similar forms like Ptolemaic celestial shells, Gnostic spheres, and Byzantine and Muslim domes. One can also characterize this variety of the historical collective symbol as metaphoric in the widest sense.¹ Hegel already constructed the philosophy of history according to this elementary literary procedure. I have given Spengler as an example for a relevant reason, among other things. For one, Peter Sloterdijk's Spheres, in their argumentative process—i.e., in the construction of historical-social types—remain nevertheless highly indebted to Spengler's example, despite the unfortunately very short and apodictic critique of him in the book's first volume² and also admittedly in the second.³ Likewise, Spengler remained decidedly indebted to Hegel despite all the philosophical and political differences in his (as it may be called) seme-synthetic⁴ argumentative process.

I would like to now contrast this variety—which, in the widest sense, is based metaphorically on merely semantic similarities and, therefore, fundamentally seme-synthetic—with another that is exemplified by Benjamin's "arcades" and Foucault's "panopticon." One can characterize these symbols as "model-symbols" to the extent that they, however reduced, participate in the functional operationality of scientific models. Insofar as Benjamin develops the "arcades" as an exemplary configuration of a culture derived from the category of the commodity, his mode of argumentation is based fundamentally not on metaphorical similarities of form, but rather on functional generative laws.

To an even higher degree, the same is true for Foucault's model of the Benthamian panopticon as the exemplary concretion of modern disciplinary society and its dispositives of observation, surveillance, and control, as well as the specific types of subjectivity that are generated by them. Therefore, we are dealing with a historical "model-symbol" if it "bundles"—without any metaphoric transformation—these culturally widespread structures.

I will now attempt to make my way toward certain base structures of our current Western (so-called) postmodern cultures—i.e., the concrete base structures of their cultural "rhythm," of their cultural constitution of time, and even of their temporal historical a priori—with the help of two historical collective-symbols. In doing so, I hope not to fall for a seme-synthetic illusion, whereby I take semantic similarities of form or metaphorical attempts at making analogies for insights into structures. Here, I hope to be able to suggest two thoroughly functional "model-symbols." The first one is the "Galton sieve," to which I will return in the course of my considerations. I have already used this symbol elsewhere⁵ on the basis of the "Galton board" [Quincunx], which was discovered by Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton. The other one is the "Stau-Schau" [the "traf- fic jam show"] of the popular radio station "Eins Live" (a regular announcement of the traffic conditions put to a rhythmic beat and following the news every hour).

One could say that this announcement is a pragmatically generated rap: a linguistic text—spoken fast and thoroughly spontaneous and rhythmic—is put to a simple, monotone, and syncopated drumbeat rhythm. I would like to characterize this rhythm as a (if not the) base rhythm of our culture...